A TWO THOUSAND YEAR OLD MAN AFFECTS YOUR LIFE

Hi, if you stumbled across this part of the Internet, I want to thank you for dropping by. I'd appreciate having a few minutes of your time. I'm very honored that you would even take the time to look over anything I've got to say. I'd love to offer you a glass of iced tea or a cup of coffee, but I don't even think Bill Gates has figured out how we can do that with computers.

I want to share a few thoughts about faith. You probably figured that already and you're thinking. "Oh boy. Here goes another one of those preachers, who wants to bang his Bible and ram his beliefs down my throat." Well, my throat doesn't take it very well when others try it on me, so I try to stay out of the throat ramming business. I don't bang my Bible. It's not good for the leather, and besides it wakes the sleepers up at church when you bang it on the pulpit or pop it on your knee. Maybe some people come to church looking for an insomnia cure. Whatever else I am, I am honest, so I'll 'fess up. I am a preacher. I took a deep breath right there. Thought I might have lost you at that point. But I'll let you in on a little secret; I'm not a very preacherish kind of guy. But I don't starch my shirts and I don't even wear a tie except for Sunday or when I go to ask the banker for a loan. I bleed when I'm cut and get mad when people yell at me (though I try very hard not to react with profane speech. It doesn't do any good, it's not very becoming, and it does nothing to demonstrate my command of the English language.). I'm not raking in a lot of cash from the preaching enterprise. I drive an 88 model car with 150 thousand miles on it and struggle to pay bills just like you do. I'm a pretty ordinary guy, so I'll try to avoid words that end with "eth" and Elizabethan pronouns like thee and thou. I don't talk that way and I don't imagine that you do. But I do want to talk with you a little bit about the Christian faith and I promise to do it in plain shirt sleeve English.

I keep wondering how a guy's head works who doesn't go to church very often, works hard at his job, has trouble making ends meet, plays racquetball three times a week and forgoes football on television so he can get a little time on the net. I'm profoundly optimistic about my fellow man, so I tend to believe that folks who don't go to church are probably pretty decent people. If you're a non church goer, I would imagine that you are honest, sincere and compassionate. You probably don't step on little baby chickens either. I suspect we've got a lot in common, but you might not think so because you see me as some kind of "faith merchant" hawking my wares on the Internet.

All I ask you to do is to look deep within yourself and your values and compare what you see with the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Several years ago, I met a man who said, "I don't see how somebody who lived 2,000 years ago could have any relevance to my life. Well, let me put it this way.. Do you ever wonder if there's more to life than a job, a house, a car, a mortgage and a Pentium? (Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm still stuck back in the 486 age before Windows 95). Jesus said, "A man's life does not consist of the abundance of the things he possesses." He said. "Labor not for the food that perishes." I had to throw some rotten peaches in the garbage the other day. They didn't last very long, so why should I wrap my whole life up in trying to get more peaches? That sounds pretty relevant to a lot of folks I know. How about you?

I'm sure you're serious about values or you never would have gotten this far. Well maybe you would have, if you're looking for an opening to hammer me, but I'll take that risk. Sooner or later, you've got to deal with things that don't register on the Dow Jones or even Standard and Poor. You've got to deal with stuff like how you treat your wife (or husband. I don't want to sound sexist). You've got to think about how you relate to your kids and if you don't have a spouse and children, you've got to think about how you relate to other people on this earth. As John Donne (He's one of those old guys from England, who wrote stuff back when they used the "eth" words) Once said, "No man is an island unto himself." Except for that "unto" he did a pretty good job communicating to our present age. Jesus said, "love your neighbor as yourself." That's not a bad starter for human relations is it?

And then there's the "D" word -- death. Nobody wants to touch that one, but it can sneak up on you when you least think it might happen, as it did for awful lot of good folks in Oklahoma City last April. We preacher types deal with death pretty regularly. We talk to the dying and the grieving and we try to find words of comfort for grieving families at funerals. I can tell you one thing about death. Six feet of earth make us all the same size. Death is no respecter of age, health, race, sex or investment portfolios. The Bible says that Jesus abolished death. I don't know of anyone else who stared death right in the face and whipped it. What do you think? Does Jesus of Nazareth have relevance for your life?

If these thoughts ignited some kind of spark in your mind, why don't we talk about it.

My e-mail address is [email protected]

Norman Bales