Lynn Jones: Actions should accompany shared message of faith

By Lynn Jones

I have lived long enough to see a lot of changes.

A man said to an older friend, “I guess you’ve seen a lot of changes in your life.” The man said, “Yeah, and I’ve been against every one of them.”

I don’t feel that way because some changes have been helpful to me.

When I was a boy, I remember watching my dad use a pen that he dipped into a bottle of ink to write. He could write several words with the pen, and then he would have to dip it into the bottle of ink again. An improvement over this pen was the fountain pen which had an internal sac of ink.

I had great difficulty with both kinds of pens, however. At school, I usually wrote with a pencil on “rough” paper. But every now and then our teacher would give us “slick” paper and ask us to write with ink. That posed a problem because I write with my left hand. When you write left-handed, you must push the pen across the paper left to right, and the points of fountain pens did not work very well when you had to push them rather than pull them across the paper.          

But there was a more serious problem. When you were writing with a fountain pen, it took the ink a while to dry. If you touched it before it was dry, you would smear it. When I was writing left-handed, my hand was always rubbing across the fresh ink, smearing the words. So, here I was writing a message and then smearing it with the same hand. 

Sometimes we all do the same when we attempt to share the message of our faith. We present the message and then promptly smear the message so that it is distorted.

For instance, we find it easy to talk about love, but difficult to display it in our lives. We write the message with our words and then smear it with our actions. The distortion makes it difficult to discern. 

We talk about faith and commitment to God, yet often we drop out when courage and endurance are needed. Instead of the message being clear, we smear it because of the difference between what we say and what we do.

Only Christ presented a message that was completely clear and distinct. There was no distortion. What he said was what he did. He talked about love, and he displayed it. He talked about courage and commitment to the will of the Father, and he demonstrated it.

I was saved in my handwriting by a great change. It was the introduction of the ballpoint pen. A cheap one will occasionally smear a little when you drag your hand through a freshly written word, but it was a wonderful change from the days of using a fountain pen. 

Lynn Jones is a retired pastor who lives in Oxford. He does supply preaching for churches in his area and often serves as an interim pastor. Jones is also an author, has written two books and writes a weekly newspaper column. He may be contacted at: kljones45@yahoo.com.