Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God (John 3:3).

Not everyone who traverses life’s rough path gets the opportunity to meet the Lord face-to-face; but those who do will remember the circumstances vividly for the rest of their lives. It is indeed a life changing moment, after which nothing will ever be the same again.

The Bible tells us of several such incidents where an encounter with Jesus had such a profound effect that they felt as though they were born again, their personalities completely changed in the powerful spiritual presence of the Lord. The little man Zacchaeus ran ahead of the crowd and climbed a sycamore tree in his anxiety to see Jesus. Amidst the teeming crowd around Him, Jesus singled him out and spoke to him. For Zacchaeus, everything changed from that moment. All the wealth he had accumulated and secured through fair and foul means, suddenly lost its importance. He was ready to share it and compensate all those he had cheated. Mary Magdeline, whom Jesus had rescued from evil spirits, stayed on with Him till His last moments on the cross. St Paul never knew Jesus during His life on earth; nevertheless his encounter with Jesus was most profound. The scales fell from his eyes and Saul, the worst enemy of the early Christians became the apostle Paul—their strongest ally.

These are examples from an era that existed two thousand years ago. But what about the present? Do we experience Jesus as powerfully as the early Christians experienced Him? Undoubtedly, yes. The decisive encounter may be in widely differing circumstances. Sometimes it may be within the peaceful confines of a church or any other place of prayer. At other times it happens during life’s stormy moments when we feel the ship slowly sinking inspite of our most desperate prayers. It could even happen when, like St Paul, we oppose Him with our strongest weapons. The time and place is unpredictable.

An old friend of mine, Shirly, recounted her own experience of meeting Jesus face to face. An ordinary day like any other, turned into the worst nightmare of her life, as her husband complained of an uneasiness and then slowly collapsed onto the sofa. She rushed him to hospital in an ambulance with the help of neighbours and she found herself outside the ICU waiting anxiously for some news. Her husband had suffered a cardiac arrest. The doctors put in their best efforts to save this young thirty seven-year-old man. They let her in as they administered the electric shocks (the last revival attempt) but his body lay inert. At the age of 30 she was left alone in the world with a six-year-old son. The desparate prayers died on her lips, but she stood there bravely confronting the situation. She felt a strength that she knew was not her own, and this carried her through the initial period of loneliness and readjustment. She prayed continuously and encountered the Lord’s protection and help in the most astonishing manner. Before a problem could appear, there was always a miraculous solution. Jesus had taken her family under His wing and life soon returned to normalcy.

Several years have gone by since that fateful day, and she now talks much more about how her life, and indeed, her whole personality underwent a seachange. Her encounter with the Lord in her weakest moments and the immense protection she experienced pushed her into regular hours of prayer and Bible reading. She learnt to cherish every relationship in her life and nurture these with what she describes as ‘acts of love.’“How does that work?” I asked her. “Oh, it’s all in the course of a day,” she replied. “Over the years, I learnt to give up judgementalism and prejudice, and I began to experience genuine love and concern for all those I associate with. As with every gift of God, this flowed from me unchecked. I learned to generously offer my time, money and other resources for anyone, irrespective of their relationship with me, inspite of past prejudices and without any expectation of return. At night I lay every act of love at the feet of the Lord. This is now my wealth and my strength.”

I listened in silence to her story. Like many of our generation who bear testimony to the Lord’s intervention in their lives, she too had encountered Him in a life changing moment, and she was literally born again, into a new way of life.