Don't wear make-up

 “Don’t wear make-up – your laughter and tears will wash it away.”* 

I’m not a reliable witness, always at the edge of confusion, swatting at the mist. Here’s the little I thought I could see.

We seldom take a weekend off, but we did this, and we wandered Sunday morning into the nearest church 

Yesterday's bringer of Good News

to our downtown hotel, where some sort of conference was coming to an end, “How Beautiful the Feet!” The sermon then was like a keynote address.

     It was based on 2 Timothy 1:2-7a, read in a way that assured us the preacher was one that took the Bible seriously: “Follow along,” she was saying in effect, “and you will see it must say what I am about to tell you.” That is,

How delightful it was to be a Christian. Nothing could be more so. And we should be delighted; we were to congratulate ourselves and one another on our great good fortune.

I had heard this line before, I admit, but not since junior high Bible camp, though there it was a staple.

I hadn’t come into church, I’m afraid, in a self-congratulatory mood or to be congratulated, and I left, I confess, less than delighted. But then I find myself these days increasingly less interested in being a “Christian" than in trying to figure out what old Jesus was up to and how far it’s possible for anyone today to be up to something similar – or as similar as a follower of Jesus could ever be. It’s not a venture, incidentally, I’m optimistic about.

But she was a beautiful woman, beautifully made up to look perfectly natural, and she spoke very well, with great conviction.

10.03.16

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 * line in the bulletin, about “Today’s Bringer of Good News”