Doing V

 I learned to read people while traveling with my grandfather and serving as his interpreter. I did it for ten years. By reading people, I don’t mean their palms, coffee grounds, tea leaves, or chicken bones, but rather their expressions. To this day, I can spot a fake smile from a mile away, even if every attempt at authenticity is made. It’s not hard if you know what to look for, and after enough uncomfortable squirms, eye rolls, wrinkled brows, pouts, and turns of the head, you know precisely how a crowd is reacting to what you’re saying, even if they’re not being vocal about it.

You could see the postures change in an instant whenever talk of impending judgment or America not being the bastion of righteousness they thought it to be came around. It was like flicking an open wound. One night, the pastor of a local church in rural Indiana took us to dinner after the service, and in our conversation, he asked my grandfather a question that I remember to this day: how can you say what you need to say to a church body that doesn’t want to hear it?

My grandfather’s answer was simple and folksy, as was his nature: “I treat every sermon as though it were my last because one day it will be,” he said. It’s an interesting mindset, to be sure. Whether it’s a sermon, a day, an interaction, or a goodbye with a loved one, if you treated it as though it was your last, you’d likely act very differently than you would otherwise.

Oftentimes, we take life for granted when we have no right to. We assume that we will have a thousand more days in which we can watch a sunset, hold a hand, kiss a cheek, speak a bold truth, do a good work, write that poem, tell someone they are loved, or enjoy the simple pleasure of a gas station grilled cheese sandwich. Nobody really wants their last meal to be a kale salad with balsamic reduction and a leafy sprout garnish, but for some, it is.

We put off the important things, thinking we’ll get to them someday, and more often than not, we never do. Not so much the gas station grilled cheese, but the other things. The meaningful things. The things we leave behind when we are gone, like the echo of a memory that we were once here.

Men have built palaces and temples to themselves, only to be erased by time. They tried their hand at immortality only to fail miserably, and one out of a hundred men who thought they would be remembered and memorialized for time immemorial are still mentioned once in a great while.

What is never forgotten, what cannot be overlooked, is anything you do in Jesus’ name, from feeding someone who is hungry to being a shoulder to cry on or someone simply willing to take time and spend time with another who has no one left in this world. Let them tell you their story. Read them a book. Hold their hand. Be the sort of man or woman God created you to be, not the hollowed-out husk of selfishness, greed, and hedonism this culture wants you to be.

For just a second, consider which would be more fulfilling: fighting with strangers on the internet over the shape of the earth or bringing a smile to a bedraggled face. Try bringing a smile to someone, preferably a stranger; you’ll see what I’m talking about.

We are consumed by our need to be right to the point that we would compromise ourselves to achieve our desired result. If I treat a brother as an enemy when all he’s done is dare to vocalize his differing opinion on a tertiary issue, I’m going to run out of brothers and sisters in the time it takes to write that strongly worded e-mail denouncing them.

I’ve made this point before, but it bears repeating: you can’t lone wolf it through life and expect to cross the finish line in one piece. There’s a reason the Word tells us we ought not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, and it’s not because of sister Bertha’s double-baked mac ‘n cheese during the bi-monthly potluck.

Not only that but we are encouraged to increase the frequency with which we assemble and exhort one another so much more as we see the Day approaching. The day is swiftly approaching when all we will have is each other. The entire world and every vitriolic, demonic minion the devil has at his disposal will be targeting the children of God, and if we can’t have each other’s backs, if we can’t encourage and exhort one another, if one little disagreement is enough to torch lifelong friendships and burn every bridge in our wake, then we will suffer the consequences of our actions along with the rebellious.

We seem to have gotten away from the idea that we are one body, and if a member suffers, the entire body operates at a less-than-optimal level. Although, thankfully, I haven’t had an attack in years now, I have gout. For those of you who don’t know how bad it can get, it has been compared to childbirth as far as the pain level is concerned. What it is is uric acid crystalizing between the joints of your toes, knees, elbows, or fingers, and it feels like someone’s shoving razor blades between your bones with all the abandon of a dog chasing a ball. Whenever I would have an attack, it would be localized to a toe, a knee, or an elbow, but the entire body would drag because of that one area. The same goes for the body of Christ. It’s not just one member that suffers; one member is suffering more, but the entire body is affected.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.