Fellow Pilgrims: Walking Together in Faith

One of the easiest things to do when we feel out of step with the culture around us is to spend most of our energy talking about the culture. We notice what has changed. We point out where society is moving away from Christian convictions. We become concerned about what our children are being taught, what our neighbors believe, and what kinds of values are increasingly treated as normal. Some of those concerns are legitimate, and Christians should not be naive about the world

Most of life is not made up of mission trips, major life changes, or the moments we circle on the calendar months in advance, like vacations or special outings. Most of our lives happen on fairly normal Tuesdays: getting ready for work, packing lunches, answering emails, sitting in traffic, making dinner, cleaning the kitchen, putting children to bed, talking with our spouse, checking on a friend, and doing it all again tomorrow. Those days rarely feel especially significant.

I recently came across an illustration in Francis and Lisa Chan’s You and Me Forever that has been hard to forget. They described people who become so physically overweight that eventually they lose much of their ability to move on their own. They continue consuming, but their bodies are no longer putting that nourishment to work. Eventually, they may even become dependent on other people simply to continue feeding them. The Chans then make an intentionally uncomfortable comp

There are certain words that carry more weight depending on who says them. A compliment from a stranger can be encouraging. Recognition from a coworker can mean something. But there is something different about hearing affirmation from someone whose opinion matters deeply to us, from someone we respect, love, and want to honor. I think that is part of why two words from Jesus have been sitting heavily on my mind lately: “Well done.” In Matthew 25, Jesus tells of a master who