Scuff Marks

Sunday morning, I was looking at the front of the auditorium during services and something kept catching my eye. Behind the pulpit at our building , we have our baptistry. On the wall, I noticed multiple scuff marks going up the wall towards where the baptistry is located. Now, I am not one who cares about neatness and I'm actually shocked that I noticed it, but it made me think of when I was a child and I used to leave my scuff marks on that very same wall. As a child, the baptistry is a source of amazement and mystery. Every now and then someone will go back there and get dunked and as a child you notice the excitement and genuine happiness come across the crowd. The person has done something that you can just feel the importance of and you can feel that this experience marked a change in them. As a child, you want to climb that wall and look into this source of amazement and mystery.
Looking at the wall, I realize that kids are still fascinated and still want to know about this mystery and experience this change. If you watch after services, you will often find children boosting themselves up and allowing their shoes to scuff the wall beneath them, but you will never see an adult go to check it out. The mystery disappears a little as you grow older. How do we get people excited about this christianity like a child who would leave scuff marks on a wall?
You won't see a ton of fingerprints on the doors of church buildings from people so desperate to see inside. How do we get people excited about the mystery of Christ? It's most likely not going to come from having exciting worship experiences, moving messages, powerful drama, or magic water. It is going to come from watching people outside the doors who are living extraordinarily for the cause of Christ. People who will go out of their way to meet the needs of others, people who will use what they have not to further themselves but to promote success in others, and people who will stand for something bigger than this world. When people see people living like that, they will excitedly follow them in to the buildings where they worship once a week. And lets not let that be the goal. Let it be the goal that they too will become people who will live out in the community in such a way as to show Christ in their every action. Let their be scuff marks on the doors of our homes, cars, businesses, and hearts where people so excitedly want to know why we live the way we do and lets not leave them in the dark, but show them the excitement of the mystery of Christ.