Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. 1 Peter 3:15

Both of my older sons work at the Chickfila in the town where we live. It’s a good place for a teenager to work. Recently, as my boys were working the lunch rush, a lady came up to Ryan’s register and after ordering her food, she hastily handed him a religious tract, and before grabbing her food, said, “My family hands these out.”

He didn’t know what it was. Had never seen one, but he stuck it in his pocket. It wasn’t until long after she had left that he was able to read it and discover what it was. On the front it read, “Are YOU 100% Sure?” On the inside it basically took a person through what religious types call the “Romans Road”. (Lots of verses from Romans that explain the way to salvation in Jesus Christ.)

Can I just be completely honest here and tell you that those tract things make me mad? People use them in place of a real honest conversation about Jesus. Now, had that woman taken just a few seconds to ask my son if he knows Jesus, she would have learned quickly that indeed he does. No tract needed.

Now if he had said, “No”, I wouldn’t have minded if SHE had used the tract to prompt HER in telling him about Jesus and salvation, but to hastily throw a scrap of paper and hope that someone will come to know Jesus with it is… to borrow a word from my daughter… “sketch”.

Jesus came to earth and showed us how to love people. If you want to see a life changed, its more likely going to happen in the context of a relationship. Life change requires investment. It takes time. Real life change costs us more than a hastily handed scrap of paper with a few Bible verses printed on it. Investment requires us to… invest. Give time and attention. Get a little dirty even. Sometimes.

Today we celebrate the miracle of Jesus conquering death. Today we celebrate that because He did that, we can live forever in the presence of the Lord. It’s a big deal, a really big deal. It’s worth time invested with people who need to hear it for the first time… or for the seventy-first time.

It’s worth risking the embarrassment of rejection. People hand out tracts because they want to avoid the conversation, for whatever reason. Someone risked embarrassment to tell me. Someone invested in me, and then told me the truth about Jesus. And I am so thankful they did.

Jesus gave His very life for our salvation. That piece of truth is worth an honest conversation, don’t you think?