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The other day in the hallway of my working place, my colleague told me an interesting encounter from his sister recently. One day, his sister found an abandoned small dog around her neighborhood. She saw the doggie was adorable and therefore she brought her into her house, washed, cleaned and fed her. Several days later, she brought the doggie to a veterinarian to have a checkup and a shot – in order to adopt the doggie as her pet officially. The veterinarian looked at my colleague’s sister a moment, with a funny face. He then told her that the doggie is actually NOT what she thought was – it is a “possum” instead!

Sometimes, we may mistake something (someone) into something else (someone else). This is very likely due to certain circumstances – it could be either we didn’t or couldn’t see it clearly or we were misled. As my age progresses, my eyesight are no longer as good as I was. Therefore, please accept my apology if I mistook you for someone else or didn’t recognize you in certain occasions. 🙂

In terms of misleading, Chinese has an idiom called, “掛羊頭賣狗肉to hang a sheep’s head while selling dog meat”. In modern language, you can translate it into “What you see is NOT what you get”.  Essentially, this is a scheme of cheating / misleading people and is common under today’s environment, as almost-like-genuine products are prevalent. The trouble is we couldn’t tell them apart by using our flesh eye easily.

In my college years, my roommate used to listen to rock/country music. One of his favorites is “Rhinestone Cowboy” from Glen Campbell. At that time, I really didn’t pay much attention to its lyrics and I always felt that it is too noisy for me because of its pop music nature. In addition, my lousy English didn’t make much out of it either. After a while, however, I seem to get used to it. As most of you probably know, “rhinestone” is an artificial jewel made of clear glass. Therefore, a “Rhinestone Cowboy” represents a fake cowboy instead of a genuine one.

Think about this for a moment, there is something worthy of pondering. To become a Christian, we believe that Jesus died for our sin. Because of His sacrificial act propitiates God’s righteousness and we are justified in front of God. When our faith in Jesus Christ is not genuine, then His blood can’t redeem us and therefore we can’t be justified.  The key here is a genuine faith. We read many examples in the Gospels that Jesus criticized Jewish Pharisees and Ascribes for their hypocrisy and lip service attitudes. 『這百姓用嘴唇尊敬我，心卻遠離我‧他們將人的吩咐，當作道理教導人，所以拜我也是枉然‧These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules. 』(Matthew 15: 8-9)

That is because God sees one’s heart. Without a genuine faith, it is impossible for us to please God.

My dear brothers and sisters, the author of the book of Hebrews called us to persevere in faith because it is the genuine faith that we can stand in front of our Lord (Hebrews 10:23-24). The apostle James also teaches us that a genuine faith needs to have actions to accompany it. He indicated that:

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 只是你們要行道，不要單單聽道，自己欺哄自己‧因為聽道而不行道的，就像人對著鏡子看自己本來的面目‧看見，走後，隨即忘了他的相貌如何‧ (James 1:22-24)

May we encourage one another to walk on the journey of faith truthfully!