The Days Are Coming… Living the Difference 

“Lead me in your truth, and teach me…”

“…He will teach them the way that they should choose.”   -  Psalm 25:5a, 12b

My wife Jan sat in a circle of children one recent Sunday.  A boy, Wesley, about seven we guess, was on one side of her.  The topic was “mission.”  A bead necklace was the “craft” project underway.  Seemingly prompted by nothing in his immediate experience, Wesley asked Jan, “Why is there war?”

I was startled.  I should not have been.  Seven year olds wonder about war and other things that matter.  People of every age bring with them to worship (or stay away from church) the really important stuff.  Like Wesley, they imagine, they expect, they anticipate that there will be receptivity to their questions and a credible, helpful response.

The Psalm lection, as Advent opens, presses the point that there is something distinctive believers affirm.  Check verses four, five and six.  Find there the repeating divine reference word, “Your.”  “Your ways…your paths…your truth…your mercy…your love…”  The Holy One, the God we praise, is distinctive from us.   It is necessary that we learn and change.  It is essential that we understand there is a “way” we are to “choose” to go.

Wesley had a reasonable expectation that his question about war would be answered in church.  He might well have asked it in anticipation of receiving a very different response than what he had already overheard from friends, national leaders and television talking heads.

I join the Psalm writer in longing to be lead in God’s truth and shown the different way that I should choose.  I desire that congregations and their leaders, including particularly myself, will be constantly clear there is a very different way, the Lord’s way.  I long to be disturbed when I/we give Wesley answers with our words and actions which are no different than what he hears and sees everywhere else.