This week will complete our "Facts of Faith" column. We're going to let Aunt Ruth finish up the column; she was the best "fact for faith" this nephew could have ever hoped for!
The new Circuit Writer book "101 Facts For Faith" is now available at the Settlement House Fine Arts Shops, Sylvania, PA, the Austinville Union Church and Olde Covert Church for a donation of $10 which will go entirely to World Vision Missions to help suffering children the world over. Thanks for reading. Next week, our column will return to "Healing Hints."
I was happy to hear from my Uncle Bob. It was a Saturday afternoon; I was still working in the office. Uncle Bob called to tell me a few jokes; and, he called to tell me that he, at last, had decided to become a Christian.
He wanted me to know, "It had nothing to do with all those years that you harassed me, nothing to do with all of your research, and stories, and studies, and logic, and rationality. It was your Aunt Ruth; I've lived with her for 40 years, and I know she's real. That's what made me decide."
Of course, Uncle Bob was entirely right. God's best product is a humble, kind, caring, sincere Christian. Every real Christian is an agent from Heaven. It is the best fact for faith that anyone could hope for. Aunt Ruth was the "ultimate fact for faith" so far as Uncle Bob was concerned. She was God's own undeniable product.
I pondered what he had said and thought, "there are a lot of religious people in the world that I don't want to be like." Later, when I voiced my concerns about how hard his job as a salesman seemed to me, he replied, "I've got the easiest job in the world; you see, they need what I've got."
That summed it up for me. You see, there are a lot of Christians in the world, that, in my estimation, I'd have to say, "I don't need whatever it is that they've got." Yet, to my own good fortune,I did need what my Mom, Marie Marple, and my Aunt Ruth had. It was for me, the supreme fact for faith.
It is, of course, what Paul meant when he said, "You yourselves are our letter, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all, and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tables of stone but on tables of human hearts " (2 corinthians 3: 2,3). In another place Jesus, himself, said "You are the salt of earth" (Matthew 5:13). "You are the light of the world" (Matt 5: 14).
The mystery becomes clear when people "created in the image of God" welcome Christ to use them. It is indeed, "Christ in you that becomes the hope (Colossians 1: 27).
What made Jesus believable is that He came with a "new commandment". Jesus didn't come with the "same old, same old;" hold a grudge, get even, raise yet another army, become bitter, complain about getting a bad deal, whine about all the unfair stuff in the world. If He had, I would have known that He was "just another man."
So, Jesus said, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (John 13: 34, 35). If not, they won't know. So, I've saved the biggest "Fact For Faith" until last. Every book deserves a good ending. I'm going to end with Marie Marple (mom) and Aunt Ruth. "By this everyone will know." Don't wreck the evidence.
"Faith is knowing there is an ocean because you have seen a brook." - William Arthur Ward