Can It Make That Much Difference?

 It Was Just One Uppercase Letter Off

                Passwords, user names, URL addresses, and email addresses have increased our society’s need for accuracy.  Ironically, in a world where beliefs, standards, policies, and principles are relative and “fluid” according to the situation or how the individual feels, the push for open-mindedness appears to be the chosen approach. But being inaccurate by one character in a password won’t work. You won’t log into the program.

                I have a different password for every need. Most are cryptic in nature. This approach to passwords dates back to my stint of teaching at Woodland Schools. I remember telling Sam Ready, our technology director, when he asked about changing the new district’s grading program password assigned to me, “No, I don’t want to change it. Memorizing it will help me stave off Alzeimer’s!”

                You can imagine my consternation this week when I struggled logging onto a program. I double checked the username section. Then I recognized my mistake. The first letter needed to be capitalized in my password. Repeatedly typing in a “c” had not helped me log into the site even though I was quite sincere in my effort. What a minor technicality! My only change was from “c” to a “C.”

C not c

                Frequently, I hear or read of sincerity or all-in commitment as basis for a person having a form of spirituality, yet with little concern for what is actually believed. Jesus cleared this up when He answered Thomas’s question about the way to heaven in this direct, unequivocal answer,

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. John 14:6

So often, the response to the direct words of Jesus involves a defense of the sincere commitment of the person who refuses Jesus as the only way. The Apostle Paul responds to radical dedication to a cause with these words from I Corinthians 13:3:

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Paul says this ultimate sacrificial effort is futile.

                That prompts the question “What is love?” The Apostle John answered that question in his first letter of John, chapter 4, verses 8-9 in this way –

…for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.

                So just as there was no way to log onto the program that I desperately wanted to be working in, neither can we arbitrarily choose one of the top 20 ways our world has touted as roads to heaven. No matter how sincerely I typed in “c” to begin my password, it never worked.

                May we embrace wholeheartedly these eternal truths from God’s Word. Our prayer should be for opportunities to boldly share these Biblical certainties with those seekers of truth sent across our paths.