Dear Readers

Kim Jong-Il was Supreme Leader of North Korea and died on 17 December. There is no doubt that his life was important but details seem to have been manufactured to make it sound more impressive.

He is meant to have been born in a log cabin in the mysterious Korean mountains (when in fact he was born in Siberia and the log cabin made 45 years after he was born), he wrote 6 operas said to be the finest ever written (except no copies remain) and on his first and only ever round of golf his score was 38 under par with an amazing 11 holes-in-one.

An amazing life, yet what will be thought of him in 2000 years' time?

Compare him to this life:

"Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never travelled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself...

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth - His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centrepiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress.

I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life."

What do you know about Jesus? What do you think about Jesus?

This essay was adapted from a sermon by Dr James Allan Francis in "The Real Jesus and Other Sermons" © 1926 by the Judson Press of Philadelphia (pp 123-124 titled "Arise Sir Knight!")

Mark