Faith like old jeans …

I woke up this morning and slipped into my faith. The anxiety and worries of the coming day faded.

The weather channel informed me there was a 50% chance of rain today. I checked the chances of me screwing something up … 100%, the same forecast every-single-day. No worries, I thought as I pointed skyward, you’ve got this.

I’ve had some designer jeans with logos predominately displayed, but they were never this comfortable. I always felt like a poser, pretending to be something I wasn’t, plus they were ridiculously expensive. What I put on this morning didn’t cost me anything … not that they were cheap, quite the contrary. The purchase price was beyond my imaging, beyond measure. Hand-me-downs to be sure, over two thousand years old I’m told. They are old, worn, blood-stained, tear-stained, the knees are threadbare, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. Sadly they are becoming out of fashion. A strong belief system today can get you labeled as intolerant, even hateful.

It’s said that a critic is one who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. In my opinion, things of real value are rarely new things. Puppies are cute but give me an old dog any day. My decades-old Sears Craftsman drill requires a chuck-key to tighten the drill bit and by modern standards is too heavy, but the solid metal case and the over-built motor has held up through much abuse and has never failed me. It reminds me of the great Guy Clark tune, Stuff that Works, if you’re not familiar with the song, it may be the best 5 minutes of your day. The chorus goes like this:

Stuff that works, stuff that holds up
The kind of stuff you don’ hang on the wall
Stuff that’s real, stuff you feel
The kind of stuff you reach for when you fall

The last line, in particular, resonates with me. I fall (or fail) a lot, but my faith is always within reach. It’s taken me a while to get to this point. I’ve spent too long worrying that I wasn’t doing enough of something or doing too much of something else. Eventually, the beautiful simplicity of the Gospel smacked me upside the head and I finally understood that I was never going to be good enough. I realized that every day I will mess something up, 100% of the time … and that’s okay because I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to understand the price paid by the one who was perfect.

I’m no theologian and comparing Christianity to old jeans, or a Sears Craftsman drill will no doubt permanently exclude me from their ranks … I can live with that.