May 30: Walk With Me

A 19th-century English gentleman once famously remarked, on hearing a sermon, “Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade the sphere of private life.” This cynical comment points out that one way to avoid the demands of “religion” is to keep it out there in the public sphere, to keep it at a safe distance, unable to challenge us to live a better life. 

Another very successful way, paradoxically, is just the opposite, and it seems to be the preferred way today: make “religion” so private that you no more need to give an account of it than you do of your circulation or your digestion. But faith is something we do, and afterwards talk about – if we must. “Religion,” after all, is made up of what we believe and what we do. When combined, they bind us together.

Edgar Guest said, “I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day. I’d rather another person would walk with me than merely tell me the way.”