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A faithful presence of love in the absences of our city.

Adorning the Gospel

adorning the gospel

It’s frequent, when driving in the more northern, mountainous, rural areas of Colorado, to randomly come across a large chunk of slowed or stopped traffic. Often, you’re on a two lane highway and you haven’t seen many cars traveling alongside you, and suddenly, you’re stuck in a long line of cars with no indicator of what’s caused the blockage. You inch along and allow the cars signaling to pull off the road to get around you, and you finally see whatever wildlife has caused people to get out of their cars, pull out their cameras, and get as close as possible before scaring the animal away.

A moose, or a herd of elk, or perhaps even a bear is such a fascinating sight that people are so drawn to their beauty, size, or their wildlife context. Groups of people will hold up traffic and sometimes dangerously walk in the road to get a look, or to take a picture.

This is what adorning the Gospel should be like.

It has become so uncommon in our world to actively witness someone living out the Gospel. And oftentimes, I think we’ve forgotten what that means, especially for ourselves in our specific contexts.

Adorning the Gospel looks like uncommon faithfulness. In the midst of changing dirty diapers, or running another budget report, or caring for your elderly parent, or grocery shopping in the middle of a pandemic, adorning the Gospel looks like faithfulness in abiding. It’s the constant reflection and admission of the power of the Gospel in us to complete anything resulting in our hearts turning to gratitude and praise. It’s praising God, in His infinite grace, to have given you dirty diapers to change, or a job that uses your talent with numbers, or the ability to be with your parent in their last days and provide for them, or the means to purchase food and make meals. It’s the recognition that each menial daily task is a small reflection and reverberation of the Gospel: when we shower, we can thank God for washing us clean spiritually, when we eat meals, we can thank God for the Bread of Life, when we get dressed, we can thank God for equipping us with all that we need.

Just like the gawkers of the wildlife in Colorado, our ability to bring praise to our King throughout the mundane, as bondservants of Christ, should cause those around us to stop and stare and question.

Gandalf said in The Hobbit, “I found it is the very small deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.” This is the way we adorn the Gospel: small acts of kindness and love, praise when we think no one is watching, and recognition of our inability to adorn anything that God has not already made beautiful.

~Emily Spare