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Simple acts of kindness, compassion, working on behalf of social and economic justce - these are things that change the world. Preaching, ever how eloquent, moralizing, ever how sincere, railing against the sins of others, ever how biblically based, will ever change the world.
If Christians could understand that people respond to how you live more than what you say, we might be able to make a difference in the lives of others. It never ceases to amaze me how fervent people are about what they believe and think others should believe while at the same time paying no attention to the impact their words and actions are having. The old adage that I would rather see a sermon any day than hear one reflects the way most people think.
Last week Joy and I were driving to visit her brother and his wife who live in the North Caolina mountains. On the way we passed a church with a sign out front that read: HELL IS SMOKING - GOD IS NOT JOKING - JESUS SAVES! Did the minister who put that sign up actually believe it was going to make someone think about their relaitionship with God? If so, he (I am admittedly assuming it would be a "he" in that church) is very misguided. Apparently he doesn't know that 75% of Christias today don't attend church on any regular basis. That sign is hardly an incentive to anyone who isn't to believe they should.
I am more comvinced than ever that Christians are our own worst enemy. We think we can conjole people into taking God seriously, but we can't. The best thing we can do is to show them a life worthy of the compassion and love God shows us. Short of that, all our words will come to nothing. The Apostle Paul said it best: "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal" (1 Cor. 13:1), Nothing more need be said.
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"...All may of thee partake
nothing can be so mean,
which, with this tincture (for thy sake)
will not grow bright and clean..."