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.”