March 11

Rahab’s Example

               You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.  Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.

James 2:24-26

            When my wife and I were both involved in college ministry, we were the first couple among our group of peers to have kids.  Our friends from around the Northwest were all curious to see how balancing the raising of a family and the raising of a fellowship at the same time would work.  They also knew that we were struggling to keep our heads above water and they all said that they wanted to help.  One couple actually put actions to their words.

            At one of our regional staff conferences this couple offered to help us get through the evening with our 1 year old.  This was pre-diagnosis so autism never entered the picture.  What we knew was that our little boy was incredibly cute, incredibly energetic, fast and mobile and had a hard time going to sleep, especially in new places.  Our friends came over around 10pm, when the night was winding down for most everyone.  People were sleeping or prepping for the next day or playing cards or having some late-night talks…then there was our room.  Our son spent the next three hours jumping on mattresses and climbing on our friends and stacking blocks and running back and forth in the room and crying loudly and trying to escape the room and running some more.  It was so encouraging to us that someone valued us enough to enter into the chaos of our life…to offer words of support and encouragement and back them up with real action.  Our friends had just gone through a full 14 hour day of talking and planning and praying and they hung in as long as they could.  Finally at 1am they tapped out and had to head to bed.  We smiled and gave them hugs and thanked them for their help.  Then we closed the door and started the next three hours with the boy.  He finally fell asleep, exhausted, around 4am.  8am I met everyone in the dining hall to start another day.  The other staff knew that I was tired; our friends knew why and were full of compassion as we moved through the week.

            Intentions are great.  Faith is tremendous.  Faith that has no action attached is not real, it is aspirational.  It is something that we want to be real about us, but it is not yet.  What we believe, what we truly believe, is visible through our actions.  Rahab’s actions showed that she believed that God was leading the Isrealites to defeat Jericho and conquer the land.  If she believed that the God of the Jews was not that strong, she would have turned over the spies and trusted in the strength of the city’s walls.

            If I say that I believe that eating healthy is important and then I regularly overeat and indulge in junk food, my actions say that eating healthy is not as important as satiating my sweet tooth.  I believe that the long term benefits of better health are less important than instant gratification.  If we say that IDD kids have valuable things to contribute to society, but we neither teach them to communicate nor listen to what they have to say, our actions prove that we believe differently.  If we say that all are welcome to our church services, but we have made no accommodations for people in wheelchairs or people who are hard of hearing or people who have special needs kids, our actions prove differently.

            Faith without works is dead.

A moment to reflect:

What do you believe about your child.  Do your actions reflect those beliefs?