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Proverbs 1:9 NLT

'What you learn from them will crown you with grace and be a chain of honour around your neck.'

I am by nature something of a showman. I enjoy flamboyance and am attracted to colour and style. My daughter, who makes her own costumes for performance, presented me with a lovely customised jacket for a Christmas present. I took great delight in wearing it to a performance of the English National Opera, where she was a member of the on-stage skills team that enhanced this particular director’s approach. I’m not a great opera fan, but I loved the dressing-up and swanning around in my jacket with its swirl of peacock feathers.

I know that my jacket was noticed from the comments that both I and Jayne overheard. Some appreciated it and many others did not like it. The point is that the jacket was noticed. It is perhaps the greatest challenge facing our Christian witness today: the degree to which we remain anonymous within a secularised society. For many, me included, this raises the question of the real value and difference the Christian faith makes to everyday living. If it’s that unnoticeable, what’s all the fuss about? I remember those dreadful days of rainbow braces and text-laden wall clocks. If that’s your style, forgive me, but it’s not by fronting up with Christian paraphernalia that we are noticed.

We are noticed by our acts of kindness, our capacity to journey and pray alongside those experiencing acute circumstances, by the loving hospitality we extend beyond family and friend to stranger, and at times even enemies. How do we find such grace and hospitality? It is through prayer and pursuing through such prayer the wisdom, or the behaviours, of God. This isn’t limited to some universal morality. It is the organic expression born in a moment in which we are ourselves as surprised as the beneficiary of our gracious behaviour.

QUESTION: How are you known as you journey through life?

PRAYER: Lord, teach me the wisdom and give me the courage to act boldly and live courageously for you today.