Читать книгу Almost Christmas Devotions for the Season - Ingrid McIntyre - Страница 5

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Do I even appear on the outside to be a Christian?

During my senior year of college, I lived in a house my roommates and I called the Castle. One of the bedrooms had a spire for a ceiling! As graduation approached, I spent hours outside taking in the sun on a wooden swing hung from a large oak tree. One day when we were outside, my friend Sam and I began talking about postgraduation plans. Sam and I had previously been on the crew team together, so we knew each other fairly well. I told him about the Christian summer camp I was headed to work for, as I had done the previous two summers. After listening to my excitement and passion for Mountain T.O.P., Sam looked at me and said, “I didn’t know you were a Christian.”

There was a moment of hush as I gazed at Sam with disbelief. I was embarrassed and hurt. I thought to myself, “What!? I spend my summers working in ministry! I lead huge camps of people spiritually! I even preach!” As his observation swept over me in the hours that followed, I was mad at myself. Why didn’t my life speak of my love for God?

As Christians, we are called to self-examination at every point of our spiritual journey. John Wesley’s question, “Do I even appear on the outside to be a Christian,” reminds us that what may feel and seem so obvious to us may not be expressed in our day-to-day actions. If we give our practice an honest and faithful look, God will help weave our beliefs and actions together even more tightly. This Advent, let us strive for our outward behaviors to reflect the hope and expectation we feel inside as we long for Christ’s coming.

I’d had a completely opposite experience a few years before my conversation with Sam. When I returned from my first summer working at Mountain T.O.P., my friend Page said to me, “Something is different about you!” What Page saw was the fire and joy of a mountaintop experience. All summer I studied the Scripture and worshiped God under the stars. I listened to youth tell stories of hope and transformation. I watched children and families find shelter, friendship, and new life in partnership with these youth. And my own call to ordained ministry was being nurtured, as mentors and campers called out spiritual gifts God had planted in me.

One of the hardest tasks of a Christian is leaving worship, or a service trip, or a mountaintop experience. We experience that thin veil between heaven and earth and try to hold on to it as we reenter our worlds. Perhaps we feel it during Advent worship or among close friends and family at Christmas. Perhaps it’s during service to others at this special time of the year that we feel God’s nearness. Whatever it may be, we have to leave these places where we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good with the intention to practice daily positioning ourselves before God. When we create a space to encounter God, we are better able to live out that love as we rise and go out.

As we wear our encounters with God, as we wake up and clothe ourselves with the fruit of the Spirit, people will ask: Why are you so joyful? How are you so confident in times of sorrow? Our personal, sacred encounters become our everyday, ordinary witness. Our stories become our invitation into the redemptive and abundant life offered in Jesus Christ.

Rev. Sam McGlothlin