Hi, this is Chris Hubs.

I don’t know why you’re listening to this, but since you are, let’s talk a little bit about what it means to live.

I’m going to try and pull a couple threads together from this past weekend, both from the gospel I heard in church on Sunday morning and then a book I was reading yesterday afternoon, and see if I can make sense of pulling some of it together.

I think I’ll actually start with the book.

So I’m reading a collection of writings, a book that came out, the first one published of the writings of Pope Leo the Fourteenth, the new Pope.

Not necessarily something I typically would have picked up.

However, this volume was edited by a guy who’s a friend of mine, and so, I mean, when his name is on the page as the editor, it’s hard to not want to go ahead and pick it up and read it.

And it’s been interesting reading so far.

But a quote I latched onto from an early essay in that book is where Robert Prevost, there prior to becoming the Pope, quotes a Belgian cardinal who I wasn’t familiar with, Cardinal Leo Suenens, who says this.

He says, To give witness is to live in a way that would be inexplicable if God did not exist.

And that kind of caught my ear and made me think about, like, at a basic level, if I say that I am a Christian, if I believe in God, if I believe in the teaching of Jesus, what is it evidenced in how I live day to day that would be inexplicable if I didn’t believe that, if those things were not the case?

What is significant enough there that it impacts how I live day to day, and is that demonstrated in a way?

Fascinating question.

Still kind of thinking about it.

I think it’s a valid question, even if you’re not a Christian.

If you subscribe to some other belief system or whatever, I think it’s an interesting question to ask.

What is it about your belief, if you’re living and evidencing your belief, what is it that is demonstrated in a way that just wouldn’t be explicable if your belief in that thing were not the case and that thing were not true?

Fascinating question.

Anyway, then the gospel reading we had this week was a parable that Jesus told, and this is one of these confusing parables of kind of judgment almost, where it’s a story about bridesmaids waiting for the groom to show up for a wedding thing, and some of them run out of oil and have to go get more oil for their lamps, and then they’re not there when he shows up, and are they judged in this message of be ready.

And from my background, I’ve always thought of this be ready as, the way it usually gets taught is, you know, be ready to die and face judgment because you don’t know when you’re going to die, and so be ready, and a very evangelical sort of message, right?

Like get your ducks in a row and pray the right prayer and get things right with God because you don’t know when you’re going to die.

But my priest over the weekend sort of framed it a different way, which I’ll summarize as what if be ready is not be ready to die, but be ready to live.

Be ready to every day go out and live in the way with the things that you were created and called to do.

Then when I tie that together with what is it that I live in a way that would be inexplicable if God didn’t exist.

Now I’ve got a conjunction of thoughts to kind of mull over, and am I ready to live that way?

And that doesn’t mean sell all my worldly goods and go to Africa as a missionary kind of thing.

I mean, it might.

I have friends who have done that, and great, right?

But what does it mean about how I live and how I’m called to live day to day here in the life that I have been given, in the place that I have been put?

Man, a lot to chew on there, a lot to think about.

It’ll keep me for a while.

Maybe I’ll revisit it.

We’ll talk later.