When suddenly it all comes together

My husband and I both wear hearing aids, and have for a number of years now. More importantly to this story, we wear identical types of hearing aids. Now for all these years he has been carefully looking at his hearing aids before inserting them each morning looking for the red mark that identifies the one for the right ear and the blue marking which identifies the one for the left. Now I am challenged when it comes to distinguishing my left from my right, and so my preference is to look at the hearing aid and let its shape guide me. Does it really matter just how we get the hearing aids into the correct ear? No! What really matters is that we do. However for years I have watched him peering at the hearing aid, especially when he was in need of cataract surgery, trying to see the tiny coloured spot, and have wondered (sometimes quietly, and sometimes not so quietly) why he didn't just look at the overall shape as I did. After all,it was so much easier! The end result, that we both ended up with the hearing aids in the right ears didn't seemed to be as important as the way they were inserted..

It is only recently that the realization came to me that what really mattered was that we were wearing the hearing aids instead of leaving them in a drawer! That the end result was more important than getting there!

If the ideals taught by Jesus in the gospel stories cause someone to live in a different way that encompasses those ideals, how that person got to that place matters not at all. What matters is what those ideals inspired them to do. How we live out those ideals is what matters whether we are fundamentalists, progressives, Anglicans, Baptists, Pentecostals, Roman Catholics, or anywhere else on the spectrum. As the Bible says in James 2.26: 'For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.'

I have come to a place in my church attendance, where I look at what I get out of it. While the words to many of the hymns, the sermon, and the liturgy no longer resonate with me, as they once did, I know that they do for others. And that is OK. However just because they resonate with others is no reason why I should feel obligated to pretend they still do with me as well. When I think there is a chance of a sermon resonating, of experiencing a new type of worship, of leaving a service having been uplifted, challenged, empowered by what I experienced, then yes, I will be there.

We need to remember that what is important [like with the hearing aids above] is that we live out our Christian values daily, not how we get there there.

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