I have thought of this concept in relation to church and to personal faith.  Here is a question for us to ponder:  What it the “main event” as it relates to our lives?  What do I project, what does my church project, what are we known for?

You can easily find out what a church is all about.  Perhaps our sign lets you know that we have what we consider apostolic leadership.  Or maybe our pastor’s name is worth advertising.  Or maybe we have the best band and smoke machines to boot.  Or maybe we are the hippest and most cutting-edge, and maybe even anyone could belong here.  Maybe we have an amazing setup for your kids, even better than the YMCA.  You should come check us out.

Now I take this Parable of the Main Event and apply it to myself.  What am I known for?  How would others describe me?  What is on my mind when my eyes open in the morning?  Is it my looks, my physique?  Is it the letters before or after my name?  Is it my money?  Is it my talents?  Perhaps I am witty or creative or intelligent.  Maybe everyone knows me because I have done so many good things.  You really should check me out.

I am not saying there is anything wrong with beauty, money, piety, ministries or programs.  It’s just that I don’t think we were created to be known for these things.  There is something better.  What is really worth being about?  What should the proverbial “main event” be in the life of a church or a Christian person?

The Old Testament Hebrew text offers insight here.  In Jeremiah 9:23-24, we are encouraged not to boast in the grounded things.  Being a pastor is no big deal, nor is being a billionaire, nor is being a world-famous athlete.  You’re beautiful, so what.  You’re rich, so what.  You’re wise, so what.  Yet we adore these things as if they were worth our worship, and we try to become them because we want to be worshipped.  We want to be the main event.

The Hebrew word here for “boast” is halal, which literally means, “to shine”.  So each person is boasting in something – something about them is shining.  There is an eminence about each of us that comes from the very core of who we are and what we are about.  Jeremiah says, in essence, for a person to be about their money, their power, their piety even, their self, in any way, is futile.  For a church to be about its building, its pastor, its wealth, its size, its programs, is more of a stench than the sweet fragrance that God has created us to be.

Paul describes what I call ‘soul aroma’ in 2 Corinthians 2.  Jeremiah agrees with Paul that the smell, the shine, the main event of any person would be sweetest were it the mercy of God found in Jesus Christ.  My life is not about what I have done, but what has been done to me.  From there, good things emerge, but they are never to be what we are known for. 

What are you and I known for?  I am arrested as I read how the disciples in Acts were recognized for this – that they had been with Jesus.

My daughter Abbey just turned one year old.  In her first year of life she has had surgery on a lung, her stomach, and in a month or so, a procedure in her small intestine.  She has four scars on her chest, one of them four inches in length.  Abbey does not eat and has vomited over 1,000 times in her first year of life, sometimes in her sleep.  She is connected to a machine alongside her for about 10 hours of every day.  My wife and I have held her down dozens of times, screaming, as we inserted various tubes through her nose and into her stomach cavity.  She has been to about 100 doctor and therapy visits, has been anesthetized four times, and has had the equivalent of 887 x-rays in radiation.  She is a tiny little girl, and is very cute, and is often quite happy.

We can all relate in some way; life exempts nobody from its inherent struggles.  One has a special needs child.  Another is unemployed.  Another is ill.  Still another is divorcing.  I find comfort in the Bible because it is a book about people, real people who have real struggles.  I find comfort in one Scriptural theme that seems to shine brightly as I plod through my own struggles lately:  Perspective.

I have shared about my baby girl.  In light of this, my football team losing, my air conditioner breaking, my retirement fund sinking, these all seem to be minor problems, if not infantile.  But maybe even what appears to be significant might really be less so.

Jeremiah writes to us of these things.  To a group of people that thought they had it pretty bad, he says this:  “If you have run with the footmen and they have tired you out, then how will you compete with the horses?  If you fall down in a land of peace, how will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?”  (12:5)  In other words, if you’re collapsing now when it’s really not as bad as you think, your doom is sure if things get really dicey.

So what if that which I consider to be thicket in my life is, comparatively, a land of peace?  It’s all about perspective.  We are told to count our blessings and for good reason.  I think that most anything this side of eternal damnation is a wonder, be it suffering, illness, loss or grief.  For in these things we see a side of God that perhaps we did not see before, or want to see; perhaps part of His glory is heartache, and maybe suffering is a way to fellowship with our Creator.  Perhaps I don’t have it that bad at all.

Paul the Apostle certainly understood these things.  Beaten, betrayed, shipwrecked, robbed, sleepless, hungry, homeless, burdened and depressed, he groans but is always of good courage, regarding the death about him and inside him to be a light affliction to be followed by some real glory in the not too distant future.  May it be so.