The best things in life should be shared. Think of the best meal you have ever enjoyed. Whether it was at a fine restaurant or at home, it certainly involved other people. Great food is made greater when you are in the company of friends. Or what about that road trip that was so memorable? More than the scenery or the destination, the people in the car with you made it so.
Sharing our life with others makes it better and richer. Even the greatest actors when they accept their Academy Award are quick to thank not only their family but the many people that made the award possible to begin with. The most magnanimous say that they are “sharing the award” with the team.
For most people this desire to share is a byproduct of caring for others. The husband who comes across an article he knows his wife would be interested in and sets it aside to share it with her as soon as he gets home. The friend who learns of a school with the exact program she knows her friend is looking for and excitedly calls to share the information. The mom who saves half of her dessert to share with her kids when she gets home because it is just SO GOOD (believe it or not this is possible).
We just can’t help but want to share the good things in life with those we love. Why then, is it that we are often so hesitant to share about our spiritual beliefs with our friends and family?
One can understand not sharing if your personal faith is nothing more than a tradition that you keep because you feel responsible to make your parents happy or simply because your ancestors believed that way. That kind of faith is just a religious form that more than likely doesn’t have much effect on your life.
But if your relationship with Jesus Christ has changed your life—if you look back and you can see that you are better, kinder, more generous, and more loving today than you were before—why wouldn’t you want to share that? If today you have peace when you used to be full of fear, worry and anxiety, wouldn’t you want to share that peace with others so they can experience it too?
This kind of sharing is not about beating someone else over the head with a belief system, it is about generously offering a gift to others because you have found this gift to be fantastic. We will excitedly tell our friends about the new mascara, app, diet, exercise, restaurant or whatever that changed our life, just hoping that they would experience the same joy we did when we first tried it. But why is it we hesitate to share our faith? The last time I checked, your mascara won’t affect where you spend your forever after death and it won’t really bring you peace (and it won’t make you look like Kylie Jenner either). But giving someone the incredible news about how Jesus Christ taught us the secret of the way to real life—both here and in the future? That’s something to share.
If someone doesn’t want to try that new mascara, that’s up to them. But it’s not going to keep me from telling them about it!
No comments:
Post a Comment