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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.
When I was fairly young, before my family and I moved to New Jersey, we lived in a small town called Webster. Now Webster is considered to be a suburb of Rochester, New York and it’s located just south of Lake Ontario.
If you haven’t guessed already, since Webster is located just south of Lake Ontario, they don’t get just a little snow. When it snows there, it really snows. Back up there, it was considered normal, during a snow storm, to have two feet of snow to come down.
Now granted, we moved from there before I turned five years old. But I still can distinctly remember really enjoying the snow there. In fact, as I recall, one of my favorite things to do when it snowed, was to follow my father outside and then try, and I emphasize try, to walk in his footsteps.
If you can imagine, that didn’t always work out so well. Here I was. This three or four year old child, trying to actually step into my fathers footsteps, which were over a foot deep each. And if I remember correctly, I ended up making more of a trench on top of where his footsteps had just been.
The thing is though, I don’t think I cared a whole lot about the fact that I wasn’t very successful when it came to actually being able to step into his literal footsteps. I was just excited to go out there in the snow with my father and try to follow in his footsteps over and over again.
This year, just down the hall, in our school, or as I like to call it, “one of our mission fields,” the school’s chosen another really interesting theme. This year’s theme is “J Walking.” Now let me elaborate before we make any bad assumptions. When I say “J Walking” that’s the letter J, as in Jesus not the illegal activity.
And then for their theme verse, they are using some passages from Isaiah chapter two. “ 3b that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths. 5b let us walk in the light of the LORD.” Get it? … J Walking.
Some ten years ago or so, there was this fad within the Christian community where a lot of people including myself, were wearing these particular bracelets. Now these bracelets came in a whole assortment of different colors and theses bracelets had four letters on them, W. W. J. D. And those letters were an abbreviation for “What Would Jesus Do?”
What would Jesus do? W.W.J.D. The idea was so simple and so great at the same time. The concept being that if a person was wearing one of these bracelets, it was supposed to help remind that person who was wearing it to think more closely about their actions. “How would Jesus treat this person?” “Would Jesus steal?” “Would Jesus gossip?” In essence, you were supposed to stop and think, “What Would Jesus Do” in this particular situation?
But then … some people started to go a little further with these questions. “Would Jesus talk to this person?” “Would Jesus watch this movie?” And even, “Would Jesus choose this color carpet?” And people started to get stuck on questions like these. And little by little people began looking to the court of public opinion for their answers. Listening to whoever had the loudest and most popular voice at the time. Letting these type of questions consume them. And in a round about way, they started to redesign who Jesus is to their own liking
There’s an old story by an unknown author, that I read recently about President Calvin Coolidge. As the story goes, President Coolidge had invited some people from his hometown to join him for dinner at the White House. Since these people weren’t sure how to behave at such an occasion, they thought that the best policy would be to just do whatever the President did.
Well after dinner, the time came for serving coffee. President Coolidge took his saucer and then poured his coffee into it. And as soon as the home folk saw it, they did the same thing. The next thing that the President did was to add some milk and add a little sugar to the coffee in the saucer. And of course, the home folks did the same thing. They thought for sure that the next step would be for the President to take the saucer with the coffee and begin sipping it. But that’s not what the President did. Instead, he next leaned over, placed the saucer on the floor and called the cat.
Sometimes, it’s not such a great idea to follow what everyone else is doing. Sometimes it’s not always such a great idea to follow in other peoples footsteps.
It would seem that far too often it becomes far too easy for us to look somewhere else besides God and His Word as to how we are to live. For some of us, at various times in our lives, we seem all to willing to let other people decide what we should and shouldn’t be doing and in essence … we start walking in other peoples footsteps. Instead of walking in our Lord’s footsteps.
Fortunately though, we have a Savior whose footsteps went where we couldn’t go. They took Him all the way to the cross, bearing our sins all the way there … where He was crucified died and was buried in a tomb and after He rose He left those sins in the tomb forgiving us of all of our sins.
So W.W.J.D., “What Would Jesus Do?” That’s not always such an easy thing to figure out is it? And all too often it can become an easy thing for us to try and put our own personal spin on this.
But here’s a better one to try out. W.D.J.D., “What Did Jesus Do?” This we do know. And we know it because He’s revealed it to us through the Scriptures … His most precious Word, which He has revealed to us. His precious gift. His love letter to us.
And through it, He helps us to try and step in His footsteps to, in essence, J Walk. Is that always such an easy thing? No, and a lot of the time when we try to walk in His footsteps it ends up looking more like a trench when we try. But that’s the exciting part when it comes to that. That over and over, He invites to try, try again.
Would you pray with me?
Lord God, we pray that You would continue to teach us your ways that we might walk in your paths. Help us to walk in Your light O’ LORD, our Rock and our Redeemer.
-Amen
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