A Wordless Answer

In college, I worked at a restaurant serving tables. Tips were a pretty big deal. If I had a good night, the sore feet didn't hurt as bad and the smelly clothes seemed to diffuse their aroma. However, if I didn't make the money I needed, my feet were under severe torture and my clothing had a pungent stench.

The reality was this: my experience determined how I felt, reacted, and treated others at the end of the night. I believe we all have been guilty of this type of reaction at one time or another.

So what are the alternatives? From where do we form our response to life? What do we do with the environment that carries with it both the hope of spring life and the stink of winter death? Why do I ask questions that have layers deeper than a short article can answer?

The simplest response I can offer is this: we respond to these questions not by a verbal answer that is memorized and rehearsed, but by a lifestyle that provides the answer. In this answering lifestyle we find a very haunting, yet potentially freeing, framework that is very revealing. In essence, when my answer (or lifestyle) is formed through the lens of my environment, I am in free fall. I am confined to the atmosphere that is ever changing; a slave to the process. There is no gravity with that answer. I am, therefore, compelled to search out other lenses for which to form my answer (or lifestyle).

In my experience, this journey was one of faith. For me, the complexities of how to live life (or answer the big questions) were very confusing. I have within me this desire to set things right, to make things attractive, to discover truth, and to live with people. My framework for developing these things was certainly flawed. So, therein began my desire to see things through a different lens. I found that my faith was a lens through which these desires could be grasped by looking to God. But, as Tom Wright says in his book, Simply Christian, I found that looking at God was much like staring at the sun.

In the journey around faith, you will find your answer to be much more life giving than by looking through any other lens. Whatever you decide, your answers to the big question will not use words, but a reaction. May your reaction be formed through an answer of Christ's love, and not a droll "spur of the moment" counterfeit.