Shade trees surrounded the screened-in porch; the breeze was pleasant. We sipped coffee from Honduras and chatted about life from each angle of our own experiences, broad and yet similar, finding our common ground: Jesus. On Sunday my friend Christine asked me if I wanted to meet for coffee with a beautiful woman, 72 years old, who had been mentoring a college-aged girl, mutually connected through the Fellows program. There was no hesitation. Immediately I knew I wanted time with her and to inevitably leave refreshed and revived.
I’m so lost without the bedrock faith of those who have traveled for so long before me. As I sat, I hung on every word she spoke and in turn expressed my own thoughts to see if she agreed. Her faith has been her lifeline for more years than I can fathom and has stood the test of time, tragedy and change. The truth is, faith like that becomes the very core of a person, like that barbed wire that grows into the tree after years of living alongside one another through seasons of growth and weather. I can trust the faith of a woman like this and I can see all the truths I have learned solidified in her journey of years and years. What confidence and what peace this brings. Stories such a hers become a sign that what we believe is real and lasting. What started with the prophets and was embraced by the disciples, apostles and on through the ages of church history, shows up on a screened-in porch in a southern home in the life of Grace.
I find myself quite nervous that the generations before us, who still teach us of the rich experiences of life lived without technology, air conditioning and the self-esteem movement, will disappear and we will flounder in the waves of nothing special and all things superficial. There will be those few who separate from the tyranny of the urgent and not-so-important, and who will swim upstream and thankfully leave their wisdom behind for us like morsels on a dirt road leading to hidden treasure. But I fear there will be only a few. Unfortunately, we have placed ourselves, our accomplishments and our own inventions in the center of the universe. In turn, we have become dull and arrogant.
I guess in the end, I am inspired and motivated to be different from that. To sell everything I have to go buy the treasure in the field and to live my life by such a cost. Truth is, I can only ask that this be given to me by the Spirit. For in and of myself, there is nothing but dust to offer.
