heroic lives

Here’s a bit of lameness for you, my cool font doesn’t translate to any other computer but my own. Darn internet, so inconsistent. Oh well, rest assured that it is a beautiful font from this end.

I was thinking today, oh what was it about? Now I’m not remembering. It was good, too.

Well, until it comes to me, here’s a question I asked a friend of mine yesterday, I don’t even know why I asked it of him (it seems now like it was an inspired moment), but after the fact it dawned upon me that it’s a really great question and I want to know my own answer. It must not have been my own question making that did it, because I couldn’t come up with this. It’s simple, but there’s more to it than meets the eye … question:

Whose life do you most want to emulate?

Sounds simple enough, most would first name some high profile figure like Lincoln, Washington, Churchill; a few would name parents, grandparents, or an influential teacher; others might name missionaries or sports figures, or Mother Teresa. But I’m not really talking about life-long accomplishments, because although they are important, the specifics of them depend largely upon individual gifts, callings, and life-background/direction; plus personality. For instance, I could not accomplish in a million years what Churchill did, because my personality is such that I compromise in confrontational situations easily and want to think the best of people, two qualities that would have been incredibly detrimental to the health of England (and the free world) during WWII.

No, I’m speaking more in terms of everyday life, is there a person whose life you look at and say “I would like my days to look like that. I would like to handle those continual situations with the same ease and grace. My finances need to be submitted to the Lord like theirs are. It seems like in their relationship with the Lord they’ve come to a depth of closeness I’ve not yet known; and I would like my life to look like theirs.”

No, I’m speaking more in terms of the mundane, the everyday, the stuff we all go through.

And why not? Why is there not a greater level of detail in the writings of the New Testament authors, to provide us with either comfort or challenge? Were the lives of Paul, Peter, John, and James as mundane and boring as ours and yet they found grace to live in the midst of it, or were their lives filled with one great and amazing thing after another and thus we have missed something as Christians? One thing I know is that less information demands more faith. We have no real idea what it looked like for those guys, for the early Christians. But I keep thinking of groups like the Thessalonians, people to whom it was written to “make every effort to lead a quiet life, and work with your hands.” (1 Thess. 4.11) Christians, working, doing the every day ‘quiet life.’ The first ever ‘simple life’.

So, whose life do I most want to emulate? I don’t know my answer. Now I want to go read some biographies and figure it out. And it would seem that if they were alive, a way could be found to seek their living advice, and if they were dead, a way could be found to still receive inspiration…their legacy of faith…as encouragement. Maybe.