Friends: When our faith produces loving acts of Godly outpouring, we’re probably working on the right road. See the column below. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1007

March 3, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Pick a Lane

By Bob Walters

“You did not choose me, but I chose you.” – John 15:16, Jesus to the disciples

I wish I could sing.

My dad could sing.  Both my sons can sing (younger son John, an alum of the Carmel High School Ambassadors show choir, can really sing). My wife Pam in college toured Europe with Olivet University’s varsity Orpheus Choir, then for decades sang in our church choir and occasionally today leads traditional worship.

Most in our Sunday lunch “Old Friends” small group are trained vocalists.  It is quite something in a restaurant to hear this group sing “Happy Birthday” in soaring, four-part harmony.  I smile and hum along, enjoying their talents immensely.

Those folks who hear me talk are often surprised I can’t sing.  My God-given, strong speaking voice is clear, resonant, and loud, but not the least bit musically dependable. The joyful noise I make for the Lord during hymns in church is silence, i.e., not ruining beautiful choruses with honking aires. No need to force it.

Thankfully God has gifted me with other joyful, faithful voices I can share, whether writing, teaching, or occasionally offering a communion homily or corporate prayer. Our current Sunday school curriculum is James’s writing on faith and works, and it’s so true that the varied ministries we pursue with love for the Lord yield great dividends in our faith and expression of Christian joy.

I bring all this up because in visiting another church earlier this year the sermon settled in on those who pursue ministries for which they are not really called but nonetheless pursue them as an act – a work – of measuring their faith walk. I.e., for better or worse, don’t just stand there, do something! And that got me to thinking.

Not so much about singing, but about trying to measure faith as a quantity totaled by our ministry and service activities. It didn’t add up, salvation as the sum of an equation rather than trusting the profound eternal grace of God’s gift to us in Jesus. Salvation is by faith, and obedience is by love. Service and ministry are the “hands and feet” of the Holy Spirit directing us in our walk with Jesus. You just do it, not keep score.

Measurement of activity is the first killer of love, but absence of activity – including prayer – is the first sign of faith that is lacking. What a Christian needs to discern, prayerfully with the Spirit, is an expression of faith that feeds on love. To pick a lane, and be glad in it, and to not envy other lanes, i.e., other lanes not taken.

In the Bible verse above, John 15:16, Jesus is leading the disciples from the Last Supper through Jerusalem and out to the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus doesn’t say much about their behavior or their ministries, but locks in on them understanding who He is, who His Father is, on how they will need each other, how their faith will feed each other, and to trust the Spirit to be with them, no matter what.

Jesus says they are not servants, but His friends.  By affirming that He, Jesus, chose them, they understand their calling is above their own desires. They are not there to merely serve, but to add to what Jesus is already there to do: reconnecting fallen mankind with their Father God in Heaven by retelling to all, all that Jesus has done.

The new lane they each had to pick was the new covenant of faith in Jesus, departing the pathway of the Law. When I think of my own decision to follow Jesus, I realize it wasn’t so much a decision as that I had been hugged by God’s love and brought into a new life; reality had shifted. There was a new song in my heart.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) can sing loudly, but then, a foghorn is loud.