For the Hope that is in me

Today I was, in real life, asked to give an accounting for the hope that is in me.  Is a person ever fully prepared for that?  I'm not sure I was, but I stood there and looked in the face of the questioner and made a start.  It would be easy, at least in some ways, to say that I just believe in Jesus and be done with it, but this was a genuine asking, someone looking for a real-life blood and guts kind of answer.

I won't say that I failed to give an accurate accounting.  I said some true things: that what looks to others to be something profound and unwavering and focused is, internally, a constant seeking and questioning and, frankly, failing to live up to expectations.  And if what this person wants is to have what I have, she may already be there.  The next step is just to keep showing up and showing up and showing up and showing up.  It is the kind of devotion that was the content of the sermon.  For once a sermon meant to hit the heart, to spur us to action, the type of sermon that usually reveals to me my inadequacy actually showed me that, hey, I'm doing it.  Endurance I got.  Persistance and stubbornness, check.  The tedious, the mundane, the repetitive: yup.  Devotion just may be one of my gifts.  I'm there, man, and I mean literally, almost every day of the week.  Sometimes twice.  And that, blessedly, is where today's conversation started.  It started with me taking credit for something.

My friend asked me about running.  I ran 38 minutes this morning and said so.  Last year I ran a marathon, but I'm proud of that 38 minutes.  Running after a long long injury, one that still hurts some and still swells and turns purple, is a good indicator of devotion.  Particularly when one wakes up and hears the wind howling and the rain falling.  There's a good example of putting in the time and training even when you don't really feel like it.  Of course, once I was doing it, I was greatful, and there's a lesson there too, but I'll leave that for another day.  Having just sat next to me through the sermon, the friend said, "Well that is your passion, right?  Running? The thing you are devoted to? Or is it?"  I said that, yes, it's one of the things, and that devotion must be one of my most valuable strengths.  She asked were I get my devotion.  After thinking a moment, I credited my mom.  She and I are devoted to different things, but I am certain that I learned from her the "just keep going" ethic.  She will care for people until she drops, literally.  She never begs off of anything: work, childcare, hosting a meal, tailoring a whole show-choir's worth of costumes.  So I guess I believe that you can learn devotion by example.  I smiled inside to think that maybe my kids will catch devotion from me.  Maybe they will not think I am just crazy, or maybe they will think I am crazy but also will learn how to be crazy about their own things.  Maybe the daily repetitive work of sticking to it, whatever it is, really does witness to the world around me.

The friend asked, then, what it is I am devoted to.  It's a fair question since it was asked in the sermon.  I was ready for that one.  I am devoted to running, to music (to a lesser extent,) to my church, and to getting my family through every day.  I should have added in reading.  I probably also should have added in that I have some friends for whom I would drop everything.  I am devoted to loving my kids and my friends.  Add those things up, and there you have pretty much every minute of every day.  Seriously.  I don't leave room for anything else.

"You grew up in this church, didn't you?" asked my friend.  I told her I had.  "I think that makes a difference," she said.  We talked about her early church experiences and her mom's faith, and then there it was: the demand for an accounting of the hope that is in me, even if not in those words exactly.  Although in my own head, I am failing to live up to the demands of Christ, although I know of myself that I have a good deal of unworthiness, to someone who is seeking, someone who is paying attention, I am focused and full of faith.  I am the one of whom the question "How do you do that?" is asked.  It is the moment any disciple should live for, is it not?

I assured her, out of a need not to misrepresent myself, that I'm not by any means as certain as I look.  That's a long conversation.  So I will send this friend some of the things I have written about faith and faithlessness, about walking the walk (or stumbling the walk) in the face of doubt, about keeping at it day after day in a number of little ways if not in the grand gesture.  But right on the spot, in a matter of minutes, while my children were probably anxiously wondering why I was not picking them up from Sunday school, I was able to point to something concrete that helps me, that would help her.  I said, "Well, I'm in a covenant group...."

For me, that was the truth.  I'm just as flawed as the next person, truly.  I'm flawed in ways I won't post on the internet, but you can trust me that some of the flaws are big.  But because I am tenacious if nothing else, I don't just give up and let the flaws be the only things that define me.  Love, if you can find a way to do it, is worth the effort.  One of the ways I keep going is by leaning on and loving people who look to me to be doing even better than I am.  I am not unaware of the lovely irony there: you could become cynical in the sudden knowledge that probably everyone who looks faithful is also unfaithful.  I could be shocked to realize that I could be for someone else the inspiration that others are for me.  Or I could see that as Jesus, through the body of a friend, taking my hand during church (as did someone I love and admire after today's sermon) and saying, "See?  Keep going.  Hope."


"Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.  And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved."
Acts 2: 46-47