Life force

“For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: To An Unknown God. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship – and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.” Acts 17:23 NIV

I know I write about being on the road for work a lot, but it is a big part of me. I have come to be thankful for the people I meet more than for the sales. Although I am thankful for those as well. I had a beautiful interaction with a client this week. He is 83 years old and a retired emergency room physician. His career kept him in Los Angeles, with a population of around 4 million people. He retired to literally the middle of nowhere in a town with a population of around 200.

We talked about some of the things he saw working in that environment. I cannot imagine. He was interested in what I do. He was particularly interested in me thinking I might sell him something the first day we met. Specifically, why in the world would I drive to his house without an appointment and think it was going to work.

Some of my interactions end up being purely a transaction. A client either does or does not want what I sell. Sometimes that is all that is revealed in the conversation. The best interactions are more. If I let my mind walk slowly through the day, I enjoy it so much more. This was one of those times.

To be honest, I am not sure how faith entered the conversation, but it did. He told me stories about being brought up in the church. He quoted the bible. He knew all the words, but then my heart sank. He said, I used to believe, but I outgrew it. He talked about the rules that existed in his house growing up. He recalled the rules of the church he grew up in. He recalled the judgement he felt. He could not get the two extremes to match, stories of love in the book followed up with condemnation measured out by people.

I am fairly simple minded when it comes to faith. I really wasn’t taught that questioning God was allowed. I have since learned that God can most definitely handle my questions. I told him that I look at it as an opportunity to have grace, unmerited favor. I get to have love, all I have to do is accept it, everything else sort of fades to me.

As he talked, he walked all the way around the gospel. He said he looked at it like a lightbulb. He said if you turn off a light switch the light is not still wandering around somewhere, it’s off. So is life in his mind. The only thing he could not calculate was what he called “life force”. He said he knew it was there, he just could not explain the driving force of life, that we are here and why.

I wish I could tell you I saw him have a conversion moment of recognizing the very thing that confounded him. I wish I could tell you that I had an answer that sounded better than “I get to be loved.” In the end, I knew his physician mind was too much for me. He was smarter than I am so a discussion of facts was futile. What I heard him describe was his mind being his own undoing regarding faith. I told him about the undeniable presence of God in my life. I told him that I have peace. The life force he recognized has been circling his heart for 83 years and will until the end of his life, waiting for the invitation to come on in.

How many people have I introduced to a rule or even a thought that limits their experience of God?

How many people have I introduced to the very source of life, the lion of Judah, the lamb of God, the force of life?

Challenge: Realizing that I am not the answer, to anything. If I surrender my day to God, He will use it, even if I do not have all the right answers.

Rick Claiborn