Life is stressful. And it often gets to me. In the last few weeks, I’ve had to apologize to a couple people at my part time job for being rude and almost got the crap beaten out of me by a guy nearly twice my size for mouthing off. (I was actually stupid enough to go outside with him to “talk”.)

Suffice to say, I was not thinking about emulating Christ or relying on Him to get me through the day at those moments.

I’ve never been great at spending a lot of time reading my Bible or fervently praying. I need to do those things SO much more. But I do have a couple things going for me that keep me closer to Christ than I would be otherwise.

I do a lot of reading and then contemplating what I’m reading. It helps me to consider what I see in scriptures and shake loose or refine any patterns of thinking that I have or hold to, but don’t really know why I have them.

I also get to do this in conversations with others. I love to talk about theology and spiritual things. But it’s talking about what theology should mean in our lives, or the practice of theology that is of real benefit to my relationship with Christ. And it’s really only in the latter of those two conversations that I connect myself to Christ and His church.

These two things get me by, but there is far more intimacy available to me (and us) through study, meditation, and prayer and through community with others (read mostly believers but not necessarily exclusively).

Can I live life, even a rewarding life, without Christ? Probably. I meet a lot of people who do. I say that with a few caveats most of our readers will acknowledge or understand. But I sincerely believe that I can live life neither to the fullest and richest extent nor to the standards that are somehow within me without the filling, usurping, consuming presence of and relationship with Jesus Christ, my friend and savior.