Something happened today that jolted me to recognize my sorry state.

A good friend of mine, my partner for the Immigration Clinic, and I were just sitting around the office talking and the topic of religion came up. She is from Romania, and she has some religious background in the Orthodox Romanian, Catholic, and Protestant (this is some specific denomination in Romania, not the more general Reformation kind of Protestant, I think) faiths. From my understanding, religion is far more a larger part of the traditional culture there.

My friend though, doesn't hold any particular beliefs herself (perhaps a general belief in God and doing good to others, perhaps agnostic.) But she is pretty open to talking about it. She told me that in Romania, Easter is a big celebratory affair. Perhaps not unlike the way Christmas in America kind of takes hold of everything for months ahead of the holiday. I told her about our church's upcoming Easter Service, that it was to be rather informal and a big time of giving "testimony" or people sharing about what God has done in their lives.

Shen then asked me, "What has God done in your life?" When she saw my surprise at her question, she said, "No really. I'm not being sarcastic, I really want to know."

Whoosh. It was like everything in my brain had departed. I was totally blank.

I then attempted to answer her question by giving her a little history about how I became a Christian, that I had a very uninteresting story b/c I didn't have a crazy background of being a wild child with drug problems or running around with the wrong crowds. I told her that in all likelihood, I would've been the good Asian kid even without God.

It gets worse.

I then told her how I started believing in seventh grade, sort of "knew" God in high school, and went through a big questioning period in college where my faith was confirmed and became really my own, etc etc.

She was politely listening throughout, said something about how faith makes some people really happy and they have hope and it's a good thing. She herself was rather skeptical when it camed to religion.

Throughout this time, I felt like I should've just kicked myself. Really, really hard. In essence, I never answered her question. I gave her this big general sketch of my life with religion, and never told her WHAT HAS GOD DONE IN MY LIFE. As I'm even thinking about it now, I think... well, what has He done anyway?

I'd be totally down with discussing issues of ethics or why it's rational to believe in God, presuppositions and post-modernism haze... but when it comes to talking about what has GOD (the Personal, Omniscient, Omnipotent, All-Loving, Eternal God who has inserted Himself into history as Christ) in my life (saving from sin, redeeming, giving me a new heart to love and serve and know Him, giving me hope and security in the life to come, giving me purpose and ability to live a meaningful life in the here and now)... I came up totally empty. Instead, I gave a weak, tepid, institutionalized version of religion in a "good" person's life. Pathetic.

What good am I anyway? I mean, I know I'm no gifted evangelist by any stretch of the imagination, but to give her THAT?!?! Instead of the glorious, beautiful fullness of knowing Christ... described so eloquently and persuasively by writers like C.S. Lewis... I offer her no value in knowing Christ. No meaning, purpose, joy, beauty, love. Who cares if one can speak of philosophy and the Meaning of Life, when one cannot even speak of the experience of knowing the Lord Himself?

It was perhaps nearly as bad as a flat-out Simon Peter denial. Lord, forgive me. Have mercy on me, a sinner. That I do not know You as I should, nor do I represent You as You are. In fact, I water you down until you become unrecognizeable as the true Living God.