Just Try It!

"Just try it," she said, as she held the spoon under my little nose.  I did and it was terrible.

“Just try it,” he said, steadying the bicycle with his big hands while my little hands trembled on the handlebar. First ride fear. I fell over and skinned my elbow.

“Just try it,” my junior high friend said. “It will really make you feel great.” I told him I had symptoms of bubonic plague, so he took the bottle and hurriedly walked away.

The success of American culture is built on the phrase: “Just try it…” The new thing, the better thing, the fashionable thing. And sometimes the result of “just trying” is rewarding and you’re glad you tried. Other times are very forgettable. Is it curiosity built into our souls? What’s the root reason for “just trying it…”?
Maybe I’m just looking for something to fill an empty place in my life, a deep down emptiness, a sense of incompleteness. People fill that emptiness with lots of things. Religion is one of them. Religion as in structured law and easy answers. It feels good for a while, but one day you wake up and say to yourself: Where’s the joy?

Religion without relationship doesn’t fill the hole in our human makeup. Religion without relationship produces a social club that does good things for the neighborhood or the world. Relationship, not with the person next to you in the pew, not with the Pastor or Priest but with a Mystery that causes us to yearn in the first place. The little hole in my soul was left there so that I could realize my need for completeness, so that I could wonder and yearn, seek and find. People find lots of things to fill that empty spot, but over time, those things wear out and, as in a piece of fabric, the hole gets bigger.

I stake my life on a relationship that becomes a friendship that becomes a Lordship. It is social and sacred, public and personal, rewarding but radically different from my natural inclinations. And it is focused most clearly and completely in the man named Jesus whose words and actions redefine life.

One day, many years ago, I took the training wheels off the bike and I dared to ride alone. But you know what? I think I could still feel my grandfather’s steadying hand on my shoulder. Even so today. My 83-year-old legs get tired more easily, but I still feel a hand when I start to wobble. My Friend and Companion. The Completeness of my soul. I offer you a sacred opportunity and challenge. To the extent possible, think as He thought and live as He lived. Just try it.