It sounds like the opening of a bad joke, but in this case, it is part of the continuing story that God is weaving around this “bump in our road.” Yesterday, we shared the story of an interesting conversation with a stranger who is Muslim. Today brought another unexpected conversation, this time with a Jewish man.
It had been a good day, though tiring. Marcia had just left to return to Newton and I was resting when a young man stopped by to visit me. I thought to myself, “I don’t know this guy from Adam,” and then he introduces himself saying, “Hi, my name is Adam.” He proceeded to tell me that he volunteers here to get more hospital experience as part of his college studies.
He asked me how I was doing and I told him the absolute truth: that I am doing great because God has been so merciful to me in this medical situation. I must have said something about Jesus strengthening me, because he replied, “I’m Jewish.” With no sense of God’s hand over my mouth today and with a feeling of Judeo-Christian connectedness to this man, I shared how I too believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
I told him that it was the very testimonies of faith of the Old Testament (his Jewish Bible) that spoke so clearly to me in my hospital stay, briefly citing three examples:
- Abraham was ‘fully persuaded’ that God had power to do what He promised.
- Joshua pursued wisdom, courage, and strength in his time of need. (See our earlier blog about this.)
- Daniel’s contemporaries maintained strong faith in the midst of a (literally) fiery trial.
But the puzzled look on his face stopped me. He told me he didn’t know these stories and that it had been a long time since he had been to “services.” He quickly added that as a Jewish man he did observe certain customs and traditions.
Seeking one more attempt to link with this young man, I told him how my Jewish “aunt” would say, “We all hold pieces of each other’s puzzle,” that each of us were given ‘extra’ pieces to share with others. He said that he had never thought of life that way, that it must be true, and that he would have to think about that.
He changed the subject to the pictures on the table of my family and left shortly after. And I thought to myself about the difference between the tradition of going to church (thinking that God lives in a building) and experiencing a real personal relationship with the one true living and loving God.
Faith is belief that we act on. It is like a muscle; the more we exercise it, the stronger it becomes.
In general, tradition has replaced religion in most Jews. They don’t actually know why many of the things they do, but because “it has always been done this way” they follow it, thinking that by doing so, they are honouring God. Tradition and religion are the two things that caused the Pharisees to believe they were true defenders of the faith. How many times, I wonder, we are genuinely and sincerely mistaken and we don’t know it?
Sometimes traditions can become special reminders of a great truth that speaks deeply to our soul. But I confess, that I am humbled by the number of times in my life I have substituted meaningless traditions for “the real thing.”