I didn’t go to church this morning. It wasn’t out of laziness or because I was running late. For some reason, I wanted to finish reading this book I had just recently started, Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.

We got to meet Donald Miller at CharlotteONE one night after he spoke as a guest speaker. He spoke about how life compared to a story. One of the central things I took away from it was the concept he explained about conflict. Every good story has a good conflict. Without that, it isn’t much of a story at all. If we look at our lives through that lens, the story lens (this is my terminology), then we realize the conflict in our lives is what makes our lives have value. The struggles. The hardships. The triumphs. The failures. All of these things involve conflict. He made it clear that he thought the best way to live our lives to the fullest is to just step in to the conflict when we have the opportunity. Not tip-toe around it or avoid it. Just walk smack into it, and face it head-on. This doesn’t mean go about it stupidly, or not to think about it and pray about it beforehand. Anyway, it is one of the things he said that i’ve continued to remind myself of whenever a conflict, however small or large, does arise. Anyway, I got to meet him like this: we were walking back from eating at Fuel Pizza after the service downtown, and we saw this huge tour bus. Surely it was his. Melanie, one of our group leaders, was a huge fan, and several of the people with us were fans too and even brought along copies of his books. Everyone was so giddy that it was his bus, but no one wanted to knock on it. Here I come in. I hadn’t even hardly heard of him before that night. I thought to myself, “What’s the worst that can happen? They tell us to back off…whoopdy doo…” So, I knocked on the bus door. Here he comes out, says hello to us, talks to us, takes pictures with us, the works. He invites us ONTO HIS TOUR BUS. It was pretty cool.

So, I met the guy weeks before I ever picked up his book. I’d gotten it from church in 2007. It was a gift they gave to all the graduates that year.

It was so cool reading the book after having met the author. Not only did I have a face to put with these stories, but it made it real. He is actually a person - i’ve shook his hand and talked to him. He isn’t some guy i’d only seen pictures of, or worse, just read on the cover of the book.

So much of his book hit home with me. One of the stories he tells is about a time in his younger years when he lived out in the wilderness with a group of hippies. He get a new outlook on life through that experienced, and later, when he re-entered the “real world”, he found a place where he looked and acted different than everyone else. It wasn’t that he was uncomfortable being that person, the oddball, he actually enjoyed it. It was empowering for him to think of himself as “cultured”. He’d been to the other side, and no one around him had (apparently), and that gave him a sense of pride. I could relate to this, because it’s almost ecactly how I felt returning from Nicaragua. I remeber wearing my Chacos, about 15 bracelets, and a bandana on my head on the airplane home thinking about how different I would look when I got home. I had this beard, i’d lost about 40 lbs, and my mentality was 180 degrees different. Okay, maybe only 170 degrees, but you get the picture. I had a sense of pride about where I was spiritually, what i’d seen and how i’d changed. Pride is sinful. How ironic. The attitude faded as a re-immersed in US culture, but it hit me pretty hard when he told his similar story.

Miller describes how he felt about these people and later came to a realization about the disregard he felt for them. Basically, we are to love. This is what Christ did. When someone spoke to them, he cared about what they were saying, and it showed. People can tell when you care or don’t care about them when they are talking to you. It’s a subliminal message, but we can control it. When you send the signal that you DO care about the words coming out of that person’s mouth, and that you care about THEM too, they are much more likely to be open when you at some point talk about your faith to them. If you don’t, they won’t be receptive.

I could write on and on about things I can relate to from this book, but this is one that really stood out. I need to learn to love everyone, and show it.

Evan “Oso” Dixon
Missionary to Nicaragua
His will. His way. All for His kingdom.
evan@evandixon.com
704.765.1956 - office/international