I love you. We aren't Crazy.

“I love you. We aren’t crazy.”

I see those words light up on my phone sitting on top of the black coffee table. I believe those words, especially the first three. But the last three are just as meaningful. I am tempted to believe that I am crazy and that my dear wife is just growing more insane by the day due to her proximity to me. We aren’t crazy, though. At least not according to the Bible. We trust God – in the good and in the bad. We hold fast to him. We ask him to lead us. We lay down before him and tell him that we are his responsibility. And we wait. And we wait some more. And we move when he tells us to and we are still when he tell us to be still. It’s hard, and it looks like insanity. But it’s not. It’s obedience.

Obedience looks crazy to the world. Honestly, it looks crazy to me most of the time. I wonder what will come of my life. I wonder where I should go, what I should do, what I shouldn’t do, and so on. I wonder about the goodness of God. I do what I feel I need to do, and I say yes to some things, no to others, and then I’m left at the end of the day with a thousand questions and I need those words. “I love you. We aren’t crazy.”

The Christian life is hard. Ministry is hard. Life is hard. Jesus is real. He is alive. He is active. He is leading. He is working. He is moving in power through this world and he will call his people to do things that look downright crazy without the lens of faith. But with the spectacles of faith resting snuggly upon your face, the world looks crazy and that crazy Jewish guy who lived a wanderer’s life, and died a sinner’s death, and rose up out of his grave all those many years ago starts to look like the only sane person you’ve ever known. He looks down on us during hard days with faithful eyes and says, “I love you. I’m not crazy. Keep following.”

So we follow though we don’t know where we’re going. He leads us through the good times and through the bad times, and in the end, we know we will end up in his world – recreated and restored to its original purpose. We will find that after all these crazy years we, in fact, were not crazy.

If you are following Christ, though all the world might scream out at you for your foolishness, you are not crazy. You are doing the only sane thing in the world, following the only sane person in the universe.

Take heart, for he has overcome the world.