Last Sunday at church, Pastor Rick told a story about a faithful 70-year-old man he deeply admires who has attended our church for a long time. This gentleman’s health has been rapidly deteriorating over the last few years due to a severe “brittle” diabetic condition and Bell’s Palsy. It is now difficult for him to even talk. At some point in the conversation, Rick was asking him questions about life and the older gentlemen paused, held his finger up in the air and proclaimed that each and every day of his life is full of joy and blessing. The man described himself as the “happiest Christian you will ever meet.” The profound aspect of this conversation was the realization that this man’s life was not at all determined by his circumstances.
I walked into the worship service that morning pondering what the Christian life should look like. I should pause here to clarify that I believe there is a problem in how we often define the “Christian life” inreligious culture. It is too often wrapped up in the letter of our by-laws. We define our faith by what we don’t do… we don’t drink, swear, vote this way, go to these places,or dress that way… and we never miss a church service.
The sad truth is that many of these things are as surface and circumstantial as our health or our finances when it comes to our spiritual life.
Our behavior is certainly a response to what we believe, and so our acts should bear out that faith: we love our neighbor, tithe, give to the poor, and take part in community worship. Yet as beautiful and fulfilling as these actions can be, they are still not substantive enough to define the Christian life. I wonder if our most gracious actions fall shortwhen they are carried on without the right spirit.
The real essence of what we believe, how we live, interact, and communicate with each other is captured in this ailing man’s words about faith.
His declaration is anything but circumstantial; it comes from the deepest recesses of his heart. It is a response of gratefulness — a response of joy…
He. Is. Happy.
It reminds me of 1 John, where the author declares that he is sharing the Gospel so that “our joy may be made complete.”
What a measure of the good news…
Complete.
Joy.
How do we miss it?
As I considered the question: what should a life of faith really look like? I rediscovered some beautiful lines from CS Lewis in Mere Christianity that left me speechless:
“The Christian view is precisely that the Next Step has already happened… it is a change that goes off in a totally different direction — a change from being creatures of God to being sons of God. The first instance arrived in Palestine two thousand years ago. In a sense, the change is not ‘Evolution’ at all, because it is not something arising out of the natural process of events but something coming into nature from outside… Already the new men are dotted here and there all over the earth… Every now and then one meets them. Their very voices and faces are different from ours; stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin where most of us leave off… They will not be very like the idea of ‘religious people’ which you have formed from your general reading. They do not draw attention to themselves. You tend to think you are being kind to them when they are really being kind to you. They love you more than other men do, but they need you less… They will usually seem to have a lot of time: you will wonder where it comes from. When you have recognized one of them, you will recognize the next one much more easily. And I strongly suspect (but how should I know?) that they recognize one another immediately and infallibly, across every barrier of color, sex, class, age, even of creeds… To put it at the very lowest, it must be great fun.”