Years ago, in college, I was moderating a Trivia contest – and I asked the two competing teams this question: When is Flashlight Safety Day?  My good friend John was on one team and, after a brief pause he blurted out ‘December 21.’  Correct.  Everyone was impressed.  After the match I asked him how he knew this.  He said he didn’t, but he figured the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, might be a good time to test one’s flashlight.

How quick I wish I was, not just to answer life’s most trivial questions, but life’s most important ones as well.  What might that be for you and me today?  What are our most pressing questions?  How are my investments doing?  Will I be a good parent?  Do I have cancer?  Will I get married?  Where will I go to college?  Or even more importantly, Jesus’ famous question we’ve all heard before, when He asked St. Peter: “Who do you say that I am?”

This is often called Life’s Most Important Question because everything we do hinges on what we set up as the focal point, the purpose, the ultimate concern, of our lives.  For Christians, that’s Jesus – and when we respond like St. Peter, calling Jesus Lord and Messiah, we’re doing more than simply answering a question.

As we know, the early followers of Jesus were called ‘Christians’ – this means ‘little Christs’ – because their goal, and ours, is to say and do what Jesus said and did.  It is to surrender to the boundless presence of Love.  Which means giving ourselves away for others.  Calling Jesus Lord, then, means walking with Him to the cross, knowing that we too will be raised up by God – and that our trivial questions, no matter how they get answered, won’t matter a lick when compared with life’s most important question.  And since we’ve answered that, we can’t help but ask ourselves why we are worried about anything else?


Reading
Beginners Grace – Kate Braestrup
Poke the Box – Seth Godin
Matthew – NT Wright