Why I am a Christian

The Good Book says that both rain and sunshine fall on the just and the unjust. I have come to believe that the brokenness of the world also remains at this time for the just and the unjust.

This being so, I for a time have been wondering what advantage in this life is there to being a Christian. Heaven has never been the big appeal to me. I am much more passionate about the here and now… “Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on earth…”

This past Sunday when I had the privilege of serving communion, an early childhood memory came back to me. I remember encountering a love manifested through my aunt and uncle that I did not have. This brought me to tears (I cried in my room for over an hour under the conviction that I did not have within me this kind of love); they told me that Christ was the source of this love. I remembered a time in my life when I was a stranger to the source of this kind of love.

In fourth grade I encountered Christ for myself, though I really came to appreciate Christ’s love much more in high school. This for me is the enduring gift of God. I cannot imagine what my life would have been like without Christ’s love. A love that has not always been mediated through others -- yet witnessed in others; a grace and a gift that in truth is nothing short of God extending God’s very Spirit or breath to us.

No one gets to keep their life and each of us uses it or give it away daily.
Some might say that we can love without Christ; I would say that the love we could love with would be much deeper and more profound with Christ. This is why I am a Christian to this day and this is why I wish that others would become like me at this one point – Ephesians 3:14-21.

I Cor. 13
I John 1
Matthew 24