Recently we celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary by taking a vacation. My wife had basically threatened my well-being if I didn’t take her to the Grand Canyon so off we went.

I figured out a few things while I was there. One was that if I had a nickel for every picture that’s been taken at the Grand Canyon, Bill Gates would be asking me for loans.

You don’t have to be a great photographer to get great photos there. Just turn the camera on, point it and shoot. But, I also figured something else out.

If you’re getting a little worse for wear physically, you need to get your picture taken with the Grand Canyon as a backdrop. It helps. People don’t look at your wrinkles or try to decide if you’re grayer or fatter like they normally do.

“Look at David. He’s really starting to look old, don’t you think?”

No, they look at you a little but the Grand Canyon grabs their eyes and you don’t look so bad because it looks so good.

My mama didn’t raise a dummy. Sometimes beauty and talent are simply a matter of who or what you surround yourself with.

That’s why I look so good in God. By faith, I try to surround myself with Jesus. I lose myself in the Lord. He makes me good-looking, holy, and smart.

“But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption— that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the LORD.” (1 Cor. 1:30, 31 NKJV)

I like Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase:

“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.” (The Message, 1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

So, how do you get lost in Christ?

You read the Word—but you do it with an attitude. “I’m going to learn what God is like and what He expects of me. I’m going to know Him.”

You pray with an attitude—I’m going to know Him, going to get close to Him, going to trust Him to respond to my prayer.

You serve Him with an attitude, you talk to others about Him with an attitude. You make up your mind and you go after Him with all your heart. You obey Him with all your heart.

Take my word, you’re much better looking before the Father when you’re lost in Christ–just like I was better looking at the Grand Canyon.

________________________________

Hmmm …

The less Holy Spirit we have, the more cake and coffee we need to keep the church going. REINHARD BONNKE