There's a "little old lady" at church that I have grown to love and respect tremendously over the past few years. She's salt of the earth kind of people. She's in her eighties, still lives in the little block home her parent's built on 4 acres, she has a working cistern (look it up - this is amazing), and she reminds me of a time when things were less complicated. A time when life was focused on God, family, and church...that's it.
It's refreshing to walk from a world filled with greed and self-satisfaction to a place where the definition of those two things don't exist. It's challenging to sit down in a place where, if the TV is on, it only picks up channel 6 and PBS, and think: could I do that? Could I live without my HD Sportscenter, and high speed Internet? My comfort zone has been tested in many ways in the last five years, and a lot of that growth has to do with the time I spent visiting with the older generation of the church.
At first, the main reason I found myself doing this was...for myself. I'll be honest, the compliments on how much I visited, or the pats on the back I received for going to some person's house led me right into the old snare of the Devil (pride). I didn't visit for the good of the person I was visiting, or for the glory of God...but simply for the self-satisfaction of knowing that my deeds would bring me compliment. Can you say, "Pharisee."
Oh well. You live, and you learn. It wasn't just the Words of Scripture that made me realize the sin in myself, but also the "little old lady" in the block house, who never asked for anything, but gave everything in return. It is the purest religion you can have before God to "visit the orphans and widows in their affliction..." (James 1:27) Just make sure that the stains of other prideful sins don't mar its beauty.
Way to go Josh. This is great insight.
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