Faith Venture

We are traveling. The journey seems longer than we anticipated. We ask perhaps the oldest question, “Are we there, yet?”

I am not a student of the liturgical calendar, but I hear that we are in the season of Advent. Even though we know that Jesus appeared in the flesh 2,000 years ago, we set aside time each year to recreate in our hearts that journey toward his coming.

Because of his invitation—the invitation to enter the kingdom of God. We journey again from where we are to where that kingdom is. Geographically, the distance is nearby. Spiritually, maybe not so close.

Some have arrived. Perhaps we know one. They have the power of living with God—not political or social power. Power of life. It’s reflected in the peace, joy, calm assurance of their life.

Maybe we are at the door of the kingdom. The journey got us that far. Maybe this season of preparation will help us open the door—for the handle is on our side of the door. It is for us to open it. The journey completes when we open our door and feel the power of God infuse us.

At the journey’s end, life begins.

We have put Thanksgiving weekend behind us in America. It can be four days of feasting at the beginning of five more weeks of feasting. Or at least eating more than usual the amount of sugary treats.

The gyms will be full of people at the beginning of January perhaps continuing into the beginning of February. They have struggled into clothes that fit perfectly only a few weeks before and have decided it’s time to get fit and lose weight.

How many men train their bodies and how few train their minds! How feather-brained are the athletes whose muscles and shoulders we admire!

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Yes, the gyms will be full. The libraries and bookstores not so. And even less those small groups where people can study and train their minds and spirits.

And after reading a few news clips about inane things some of our professional football and basketball stars have uttered recently, I see that 2,000 years have had little impact on the athlete community.

Physical training doesn’t fall into the traditional list of spiritual disciplines. I believe it should be. Movement, flexibility, strength, nutrition—these are part of being as healthy as possible. These give the stamina for study, meditation, service, prayer. Just as I have believed from an early age that education includes the arts and the sciences, the rest of us require both physical and spiritual strength.

For although the body needs many things in order to be strong, yet the mind grows from within, giving to itself nourishment and exercise. Yonder athletes must have copious food, copious drink, copious quantities of oil, and long training besides; but you can acquire virtue without equipment and without expense.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Actually, to modify Seneca, we can begin a physical fitness routine just by walking (barring infirmity, of course). And that is free. Books can be found also for free in a library or for the price of an Internet connection. And you can begin now.

Jesus commissioned his followers to a task. No, more than a task. It’s really a way of life.

Make disciples…

He didn’t say the end goal was how many people attend your church. Or even how many baptisms last week. How many people do you know who were baptized with great joy and then within a year had drifted away?

No, a disciple is someone who:

• Takes great joy in learning
• Makes the effort to emulate the teacher
• Absorbs certain disciplines into the everyday fabric of life
• Eventually looks for the next generation to lead
• Exhibits the fruit of the spirit most of the time

He didn’t say extract a statement of agreement and then move on to the next conquest.

After totally upending the Roman culture of power in favor of a God-centered culture of love, he didn’t instruct us to seek political power to force others to agree with us. Or at least behave in public like we wish.

Did you pause this morning to orient your life toward God before beginning your day? It’s not too late.

We become like the sum of the people around us.

Who is the group with you that meets for coffee in the morning?

Who is in the group that meets after church or in the tavern or at a sporting event?

The fear of almost every parent when their children reach socializing age concerns the peer group the kids associate with. Parents know that this group will have more influence over them than the parents will for the next few years.

Perhaps there are people we should ease away from. Cultivate those who are supportive.

Pause and look around. Do we wish to be like those who surround us? If not, then perhaps we need to seek out new groups.

We learn to choose wisely.

Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch…

Acts 8:26-27

This story presented itself to me this morning in contemplation. My contemplation centered on the difficulty we have accepting, or at least dealing civilly with, people of races and/or sexuality from ourselves or our culture.

In America, that group may be black people or homosexual people. In much of Africa, people of another tribe and homosexual people. We have been watching English TV, a crime series set in the 1960s. A particular neighborhood had signs on apartment buildings, “No blacks or Irish.” And so it goes, region by region, around the world.

Yet, Philip, a Jew but also now a leading Christ-follower, is guided by God to an opportunity. This opportunity to meet a seeker who is of another race and sexuality. (It’s tricky to translate first century culture to twenty-first, but there is some similarity.)

Philip spends time with the man explaining how the Hebrew Scriptures pointed to Jesus and then the good news of Jesus. The Ethiopian accepted that story through faith and was baptized.

Our challenge is this—how open are we to talking with someone we meet who is different from us? Could we be Philip in the twenty-first century?