Belief is only the beginning...

Sunday I heard the testimony of a man who used to live in refugee camps and on the streets as a kid. As a mere child his poverty and his status as an orphan led him to become a thief, a murderer, a prisoner, a gang leader. One day while the boy was a houseboy for an elderly Rwandan Christian couple, he decided to steal their DVD player and ran away. Later that day, he saw the old man running after him and assumed he was coming to beat him and take back his stolen possessions. Naturally, the young boy ran and soon drew the attention of the police who shot him and beat him up nearly to death. When the old man finally caught up to the young thief, he was so upset that the boy was bleeding and beat up that he carried him back to his house and personally nursed him back to health. When the boy finally came around, the old man explained that he had followed him only because he wanted to convince the boy to come back or to give him money to take so he could provide for himself on the streets.

In that instant, the young boy's life was forever changed.

Today the young man is a 20 year old lover of Jesus who is still finishing high school. When he's not in school, he fixes shoes and with his earnings, he houses and provides for 40 street kids in his humble dwelling each night. Why does he do it? His answer is simple: because that day so many years ago, he was given what he didn’t deserve – grace and love. Now, he spends his life giving the same gift to other boys in his community.

It is by these acts that the world is changed and the Kingdom of God is made known. It’s by love in action. This kind of change doesn't come about from a Christian who worships in church on Sunday and remains unaffected and uninvolved in the needs of the world; not by someone who hoards his or her things but sees them as tools of the Kingdom. Transformation comes by living and enacting the Gospel; not just by reading it and thinking that doing the things it says are for other people.

Be a part of it.

“For us, belief is only the beginning. What really matters is how we live, how what we believe gets fleshed out…” (Claiborne, 148).