ABSTRACT
Christians want to walk through life with Christ, feeling grateful for blessings,
and becoming established in the faith. But how do they weave together what
they have learned from scripture about God’s love with what they have learned
from their own experiences? Alex would call the result of this process “embodied
faith.” He said his goal is to “make faith real,” and he told a story that has a
seamless quality, hanging together around this theme. All through his life, he
attempted to be real and to be a Christian, to weave together faith and life. Now,
at 75, his goal continued to serve him well. Alex was able to feel gratitude for
days lived in the past, days being lived today, and for whatever may arrive on days
to come. “I was so fortunate,” he said of the past, I am “the most blessed of all
people,” he said about this moment, and I’ll “have more time to appreciate my
family,” he said of the future. This older man exemplified spending one’s later
years “abounding in thanksgiving.”