Sharing The Experience

We're preparing to leave for New Orleans and the National Youth Gathering. It’s always exciting to leave home, but it has changed some over the years. Now, along with the excitement comes a little fear and regret that I will be away from Kristin and the kids for over a week. I just know that when I return, Nick, our one-year-old, and maybe even Libby, our three-year-old, will look a little different. They will have changed while I was away. And, in fact, I will have changed too. I will come back having experienced things that I will attempt to share with my wife, but I won’t be able to share the experience of New Orleans and the Gathering with her in mere words. No matter how much I try to set the stage and explain all that happened while away, my words will not capture the excitement of being in a different place and the impact that a spiritual experience like a youth gathering will have on me.
I’m sure you have all experienced the sort of thing that I’m talking about. Something happens to you and you want to share it with others, but when it comes time to relay the experience and the impact of it on your life, you just can’t communicate the fullness of it, you can’t bring another person into the experience with you.
Isn’t this how it is with our faith? As much as we would like to communicate it to others and to give them the same sort of peace that we feel because of the experiences that we have had as we’ve come to know God and his Son, we can’t always bring others along for the ride as we would like—especially not with mere words. But like when we return home from a trip a changed person, what we can do is live in a way that shows others how we have been changed. As Christians, we let our lives tell the tale of our faith and use our words as mere support and explaination.