Day 12 - A letter from Christ

If you say that you are Christian and you read the book of God, then the life you live is being read in its turn, by other people. You are not passing through the world unnoticed. Someone is watching, and someone else is almost certainly attempting to copy some aspects of your life and character. Your everyday life is being written down and kept in someone else's memory.

My own dear mother-in-law, who has now gone on with life in heaven, is often the topic of pleasant conversation in my home. Her wisdom and her characteristic views and sayings engraved in our memories are read over and over again. She still lives as an epistle in our hearts.

We read her daily life while she was living with us, and we continue reading it now that she is no longer with us. That very thing applies to the reading of all Christians.

We are said to be the letter from Christ (2 Cor. 3:3). reading our life is intended to be like reading the life of Jesus. All the scripture that most people will ever read is what they read in the lives of Christians.

Our lives are read just as they are, not as we wish they would be. It is what they se and not what we aspire to be, what we really are, that goes down in their memories. The ones who read our lives have a certain way of reading between the lines so we must try not so much to make life holy as to be holy.

If you are leading a holy life, then go on living as the person you are. Never strive to be what you are not. The only way you can get yourself into the position where the Bible is being read through your life is to get it into your heart. No one will ever see Christ in your life simply because you have a neat little zip-up New Testament in your handbag or a large family Bible on your Sitting Room coffee table.

There is power in the Word of God alright, but it works out from inside you. Let the words and the stories of the works of Christ dwell in you richly - not the image of Christ in your imagination but the image portrayed in the gospels. It will change your life, and the whole way you think about it and about other people, and then your life will read just like the Holy Scriptures.

The Word of God is a lamp designed by God to light our way into a holy life. If we follow its instructions in righteousness, it will make us holy, as Christ demanded of us. The light reveals to us our flaws and failings and then gives us opportunities to polish it and to make improvements.

We are none the worse for discovering our own imperfections; it is only when we hang on to them and let them stay with us after their revealing, that we become the worse for them.

The heart that comes under the influence of the Bible will carry the image of Jesus.