How's your walk? Before you answer, consider the following verbs. To BE and to DO. When you think of yourself as a Christian, is it based upon what you do or who you are? Does your action determine your identity? It depends upon the skill and accomplishment that the action produces. If I play golf my whole life and spend my whole life being lousy at it, nobody will ever call me a golfer. If I attempt to take the life of another human being just once and succeed, forever I will be labeled a murderer. We would likely say that, in Christendom, being is far more important than doing. Yet if you follow that trail of thought for a while you realize that one can only discern who one might be from what he does. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, emphasizes the being. That it is God who does the work and you simply are. James emphasizes the doing by saying that faith without works is dead. Contradictory and confusing? I suggest instead that they are rather complimentary and congruent. God leads us with a kind of dialectic approach where, like walking, we rest on one foot for a second, but in order to make progress, we have to leave that one and rest on the other for a while. If this balance gets out of order and I focus too much on who I am, I hear God say, "What are you doing?" When I begin to focus too much on what I'm doing, I hear Him say, "Who are you, really?" And that, I believe, is why the Christian life is called, a walk. So the next time somebody asks you, "How's your walk?" Instead of a giving a vague question such a vague answer, consider the verbs, check your steps, and remember who you are and what you are to do. When you want to look to the future and are drawn to growth in Christ, remember it is one that leads to the other and miles down the road, you may not remember every step you've taken but the point is never the walk itself, but the destination to which the walk brings you. 1 John 3 says "Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure."