On Living Long, Living Fully

This weekend, Amber and I spent 13 hours in our car to drive home to Lafayette, IN and back to Pittsburgh. Of course, with gas prices as they are, one would wonder who in their right mind would be taking road trips so frequently, but it was so worth it. This past Sunday night, my 82-year grandma was baptized and became a member of the church I grew up in. It was such an amazing moment to watch this short, old lady, this gentle, warm spirit, to walk into the waters and get dunked. I was moved as I listened to her testimony - something I had not heard before - and hear her recount the many twists and turns life has brought her and the way her faith has grown since the death of my grandfather and her move to Lafayette.

It's weird how God works sometimes. For years, we prayed for my mom's family and their spiritual walks, and for years my grandparents had issues with my family's Baptist church and its conservative, Republican leanings (and probably for good reasons!). So when my parents first told me my grandma had decided to get baptized and become a member, I couldn't believe it. Then, my mom said, "It's just amazing how all these years, you boys and our family have slowly had an influential impact on her life." And I responded, "Yeah, but it goes both ways. She may be becoming a member of our church, but she's convinced our family to vote Democrat!" [Go Obama!!] What a wonderful thing it is to be in relationships with people with whom we have sharp differences only to find that, through humility, those differences can help shape and mold our own views and turn into dialogue, mutual sharing, and positive influence.

This was really a large part of the message of the pastor this past Sunday. Of course, I honestly did have reservations going back to my home church, and still have qualms about the conservative, Baptist framework, but it was a beautiful thing to see so many people I know and love, hear the old and great hymns of my childhood, and sit under the preaching of the pastor I grew up with. He spoke largely on the need for Christians to spend more time building relationships with the lost, the despised, the dropouts of society. He challenged this conservative congregation to spend time with those Jesus spent time with, those who even secular society consider the scum of the earth and told him it was wrong to cave into the insular, confining sub-culture of conservative Christianity that always lives in fear of what people think of us if we're hanging out with the 'wrong' people. What a message we all need to hear. And who knows, maybe those we consider "wrong" and the lost cases of society can prove to teach us more than we ever imagined. Maybe we'll be able to see the many ways we ourselves are wrong, are lost cases.