In the larger cities of our countries, I have often seen men walking the streets as human billboards. They were advertising for some restaurant in town. But when I looked into their faces for the first time, I was startled. They were the starved and emaciated faces of the unemployed, who were doing this in order to get a little money.
Many of us make the same sort of advertisement for the life of God, but when other people look at us closely they can see in our faces the traces of death. Naturally we don’t want that to be known, hence we try to convince ourselves and others, as well as God, of the very opposite. Thus the so-called “show of religion” begins. It has the appearance of a skeleton that has been put together again with wires. You can make the skeleton move and it might give the impression of being alive; but in reality it is only a dance of death, the hopeless rattling of the dead.
And yet God bids us to hope. The beginning of a new life lies with Him. We may hold fast to this one thing, “Thus says the Lord: Behold I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.” Or doesn’t this rattling even bother you anymore?
--Arthur Stephen
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