The Simple Truth

I (Kathy) read a book recently by David Baldacci called "The Simple Truth". After years of covering up the murder of a young girl, the simple truth of what really happened was at long last revealed. In an era when racism held a tight lid on the facts, an innocent man on death row finally gets his justice.

Sometimes we spend so much time questioning, doubting, and being cynical, that the simple truth of the gospel gets lost. In an age of post-modernism, both here in Europe and in America, a lot of great questions are being asked. I am all for digging deep and having the courage to probe, but I wonder if part of the price tag has been a cover up of the simple truth.

My daughter Kristi witnessed a very unsettling event in Seattle this past year. A man stood in a park yelling a gospel to an unlikely audience including a woman without shoes and a man who didn't know where his next meal would come from. I say "a gospel" rather than "the gospel", because, as Kristi put it when describing this event to me, "his gospel is not the gospel that I know. Christ's love met needs. It gave away shoes and food and a place to stay."

So the questions get asked and the answers seem elusive. But today it all seems so simple to me. I was reading in Revelation 2, about hanging onto our first love. And as I studied the word love, I found very simply that Jesus said "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself". Pretty simple. We don't only love God, and we don't only love people. We love God. We love people. The simple truth.