Today I attended a memorial service for one of the dear senior saints in our church. And I was struck, once again, by the kind of person her ‘kind’ of Christian faith led her to become. I say her ‘kind’ of faith because it seems that, even in my lifetime, ‘normal’ evangelical Christianity has changed and, I think I would have to say, devolved.
It seems to me that the typical evangelical Christian today is preoccupied with self in a way that Bible-believing, Bible-reading, Bible-obeying Christians of a couple generations ago were not. Back then, the Christian consensus really was (in the words of a simple gospel song), “Jesus, then others, then you…that’s the way to spell ‘joy.’”
But now our natural love of self is not only not rebuked or challenged, it’s too often affirmed. “Why am I not happy?” “If only I had….” “I just don’t feel fulfilled…others have let me down…”
But this dear lady had poured herself into the lives of others. Even though she never married and had no family, she ‘adopted’ a circle of fellow church members and neighbors and she became a mother and sister and aunt to so many of them. She was a teacher, and it was evident from the letters read from former student, that she had taught them not only certain subjects, but also about life itself.
She devoted herself to cultivating and strengthening lifelong friendships, and it was clear that she did this, not by being preoccupied by what she could get from others, but by what she could give. She sincerely imitated and obeyed her Savior who taught her (and her generation) that “whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant” (Matt. 20:26).
I hope and pray that my generation, and younger, can learn from our Bibles, and from the lives of such senior saints, that the authentic Christian life only truly begins on the other side of the crucifixion, not the coddling, of the self.
-- Matt.16:24-26; Rom.6:3-6; 2 Cor. 4:8-12; Gal. 2:20; 5:24; 6:14; Phil.3:8-11; 2 Tim.3:1-2ff.
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