I am weird when it comes to books.
I blame my affliction on my birth location across the street from a public library. Surely, someone left the window of the little hospital open and the scent of musty old books crept into the birthing room.
It is not strange for me to read the same book more than once. (Don’t laugh if you have ever watched a movie twice.)
I read books by Philip Yancey, Jim Collins, and a wide variety of authors multiple times. It seems I can never milk them dry. I own multiple books chronicling the 1957 slaying of five young missionaries by Waodani Indians in a jungle of Peru. More than once, I’ve imbibed this missionary story of loss and gain.
It is hard for me to part with my book friends. To re-read a book is like listening again to an old friend.
This morning—due to space concerns at my home office—I sold three boxes of my friends to Half-Price Books. I’m feeling dirty right now—like I betrayed someone.
Charles Monroe Shelton’s, In His Steps, falls into the category of rich rereads. I read the book forty years ago.
Last month, I experience in my re-read the freshness and challenge the book must have invoked when first published in 1897. It sold 30,000,000 copies during the past 116 years.
The book presents a timeless question.
In its fictitious setting of the town of Raymond, the Rev. Henry Maxwell of the First Church of Raymond turns away an out-of-work printer—who seems to be just a bum—interrupting sermon preparation with a knock on the door.
The Sunday sermon would be taken from 1 Peter 2:21. It must be polished for presentation to a church of outstanding community citizens.
To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
With hat in hand, the poor soul who lost his job to the invention of the Linotype machine appeared to no avail before various church members throughout the week.
Having lost his wife to death from a lack of medical care and poor tenement conditions within Christian owned property, he placed his baby daughter with relatives. His last hope for food, medicine, and a job remained in attending the Sunday morning worship service.
At the end of the sermon on following in the steps of Jesus—with hat in hand—he makes his way toward the front to address the audience.
I was just wondering, as I sat there under the gallery, if what you call following Jesus is the same thing as what he taught? The minister said that it is necessary for the disciple of Jesus to follow His steps, and he said the steps are obedience, faith, love, and imitation. But I did not hear him tell you just what he meant that to mean, especially the last step. What do you Christians mean by following the steps of Jesus?
It seems to me there’s an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn’t exist if all the people who sing such [beautiful] songs went and lived them out.
I suppose I don’t understand. But what would Jesus do? Is that what you mean by following His steps?
By the end of the week, the beggar was dead.
The following Sunday the guilt-ridden minister invited the congregation to join with him in a one-year pledge to ask the question before each decision to be made, “What would Jesus do”?
The story unfolds around the one vital question.
For the following year, each Sunday after services, pledge-makers met to encourage one another as the answer to the one question caused loss of income, loss of employment, broken relationships, and defeat in attempting to mend some of society’s wounds from a Satan controlled world.
As I re-read my old book friend, my recent thinking on a divided church surfaced anew.
If were acting more like Jesus, would I not stop contributing to disunity and instead be a positive contributor to the health of Christ’s body?
I think that is what Jesus would do.
Stay tuned.
Gary J. Sorrells – Reflecting on Cross Church
God Reflection 