(Rich Olfshefski)
When I was 17 years old, I experienced what I have come to call an upgrade to my faith. I was raised in the church and can’t remember a time when I wasn’t a true believer. But at age 17, I met some people who were involved in the charismatic renewal which was sweeping through Pittsburgh at the time. I’ll leave it to you if you’re interested to look up more precisely what that was, but essentially it was a sort of revival that included the spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians. I was invited to a prayer meeting and at that first gathering, we sang the song “They will know we are Christians by our love”. This resonated deeply with me. It was 1972 and the Vietnam war was the big news item. I was on the fringes of the peace movement. I didn’t attend any protests, but that was where my sentiments laid. Peace and love was the mantra. So these ideas of peace in Vietnam, peace on earth, Jesus being the prince of peace, Jesus saying in the Beatitudes blessed are the peacemakers, love thy neighbor, they will know we are Christians by our love all converged in me and I thought, yes, this is for me. This is what I want my life to be about.
This came back home to me when Dave Snoke read and reflected on Matthew 25:35-40. The idea that God sent his only begotten son to earth with the message, “When I was hungry you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. Naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. When did we see you like this, oh Lord, asked the sheep? When you did this for the least of these, you did it for me.” This reminded me again of why back in 1972 I decided to follow Jesus. And as Dave reflected, God wants to so shape our hearts that we do this without thinking much about it, without doing it to seek merit or to impress anyone, to do it naturally, simply because it’s a good thing to do. God will write his laws on our hearts. This continues to resonate with me today. It is still what I want my life to be about.
——————–
An audio version of each devotion will be posted on our church podcast “Life Together at CRPC,” which is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.