• Jun 21st, 2013 at 1:59 PM (CST)
• By PD
• Categories:

This morning as I walked one of my usual courses of about six miles a man jogged past me. I said my usual greeting, "Good morning, blessings!" He muttered something like, "You too," and continued on by. After about forty or fifty steps he retraced his path back to me and said, "I have been running for fifteen years, and 20,000 miles. In all that time you are the only person to ever wish me blessings!" I was pleased and he continued, "My father died this past Monday." I encouraged him with the peace of the Lord, and just as quickly he smiled and was off to his run again.

Twenty thousand miles and not a single blessing. That is a lot of ground covered, and a lot - likely several hundred, or even perhaps thousands - of people encountered, without a single comment of blessing. What does this say about America? To me it says we are inhibited spiritually, to the point that people here act like faith is some kind of communicable disease which is best not shared. Half of the people I wish blessings to at the health club I frequent look at me strangely, as though they struggle to mentally process why I would say such a thing to a stranger.

I just returned from leading a ten day tour of Israel; by the way, I plan on leading such tours every year. If you have an interest, contact me here at thewordtoday.org and we'll share all about it. I noticed that the bus driver and tour guide constantly waved and smiled to individuals they recognized in the communities we visited. The bus driver said that making such contact was, "the Israeli national sport." It seemed to me that in a region with such political tension the population was trying to put salve on the wound daily by a million small gestures of frendliness.

The more stong a Christian becomes in their relationship to Christ, and the more one wishes to exude that relationship the more it becomes clear that for most the ardent, outgoing Christian is the exception. Which is precisely why I say, "Good morning, Blessings," even the the man who sneers F.U. as well as the cheerful fellow believer who responds in kind. We have a dearth, yea, a desert of Christian culture in America as the overt practice of faith barely seeps out of church doors. A person can run 20,000 miles and never encounter a blessing,

That is a travesty, a real shame. I encourage you to be a person who dispenses blessings rather than hollow niceties.