In "Girl meets God" Lauren Winner describes her first experience of Ash Wednesday, so-called because Christians are to receive a cross on their foreheads made of ash as a way of beginning the season of Lent. As she walks through the streets of Cambridge, MS, people stare and she writes that she wonders what they're wondering.
She then describes several conversations she has as a result of the smudges on her forehead: someone asks her where to go to church, another person accuses her of being closed-minded and an unfit college teacher, another person pulls her aside to tearfully share that her parents are divorcing.
As I read, it made me wonder: where are the marks in my life that I am a Christian, a follower of Jesus? If I had such marks some might be curious, others might want to know more, some might be hostile, and others might reveal their thirst, much as the woman at the well did in John 4.
Most of us who follow Jesus in the USA are uneasy with the notion of evangelism in the sense of talking with people about following Jesus. We can talk easily about job stress, housing costs, raising kids, or just about anything other than Jesus. So we, perhaps unconsciously, avoid putting anything into our lives that makes it too obvious that there's something different about us.
Somehow, I want to fill in that gap in my life. Let's give 'em something to talk about. And then maybe we'll have the chance to talk to them about the one thing that's really worth talking about.
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