I am Thankful to be a Christian Because...

This is a group writing project sponsored by Hopeful Spirit. This is my response to the prompt, "I am thankful to be a Christian because...".

Faith is not a numbers game, responded Mother Teresa to Time magazine interviewer Edward W. Desmond in December, 1989, when he remarked, "Friends of yours say you are disappointed that your work has not brought more conversions in this great Hindu nation."

Mother Teresa explained: "Missionaries...only want to proclaim the word of God. Numbers have nothing to do with it. But the people are putting prayer into action by coming and serving the people. Everywhere people are helping. There may not be a big conversion like that, but we do not know what is happening in the soul."

"What do you think of Hinduism?" Desmond asked her.

"I love all religions, but I am in love with my own," she replied.

"And they should love Jesus too?" Desmond pressed.

"Naturally, if they want peace, if they want joy, let them find Jesus. If people become better Hindus, better Muslims, better Buddhists by our acts of love, then there is something else growing there. They come closer and closer to God. When they come closer, they have to choose."

We do not know what is happening in the soul, said the humble missionary.

That works for me.

"We do not know" is not a sequence of words that often fall out of the mouths of the average Christian. Not in my experience. So many Christians are focused on knowing all and proclaiming it in a way that precludes any perspective but their own. This act of hubris presumes to know what God knows. It is an attitude and behavior that slams doors shut and leaves Christians with the name of being inaccessible and self-righteous.

First and foremost, faith is about finding God within and living in a way that honors that relationship between you and God.

To be humble, to live your faith quietly and for the joy of it in its own right, to recognize that "we do not know what is happening in the soul" is to accept the possibility of new wisdom that leads to the one God, whose son Jesus Christ led by example. He ate with the most reviled members of Jewish society, he embraced outsiders, he opened the way for healing to the many whose illnesses made them outcasts. So great was his love that death could not stop it. The Gospels recount his raising the dead and of his living through death and beyond on the strength of that glorious love.

If our dear friend and teacher Jesus could do all this that we might know divine grace and walk in the light, then the very least we can do is humbly accept that "we do not know what is happening in the soul."

Jesus preached that the kingdom of God is within us and that this kingdom, his Father's House, has many rooms. We are all children of God; there is room for all of us. This is a vast and wonderful place. It is your heart. Imagine it.

Jesus is the true son of a living God. He lived by example and accepted death that he might affirm the glorious nature of the Love that fills the kingdom that is inside each of us. He calls us friends and bid us to do the same. Imagine it. With a glad and grateful heart, imagine it.

Hopeful Spirit