In the Detail

I’ve been looking around online getting ready to book flights. The main airline’s website is offering a price which seemed high, so I checked the websites offering cheap fares and found one which seemed, at first sight, to be a bit better.

However, in checking the detail I realised that when you included the cost of a checked in piece of luggage, the main airline was actually offering a cheaper fare.

‘The devil is in the detail,’ someone has said. 

So many things in life come with long pages of detail which we have to subscribe to before we can go any further. I don’t know about you, but I don’t always read those pages. I tick the box, impatient to get on with whatever it is, without considering carefully what I’m agreeing to.

People often affiliate themselves with religions in much the same way. They join up because they enjoy something about it, or because they are happy to adhere to its most prominent points, or because they assume they fall under the umbrella of belief. 

Many people call themselves Christians, for instance, without exhibiting many of the attributes that a follower of Jesus should have. Not going to church is a small part of that. More important are the attitudes – of humility, of service, of seeking justice and peace, of loving our enemies – attitudes Jesus modelled for us and also taught us in many of his parables. Attitudes which are so challenging to keep that without reliance on God through a close relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit, they are well nigh impossible.

Perhaps a more apt saying would be that the truth is in the detail. Jesus declared himself to be the Truth, and said that he is the way, the truth and the life. 

That is just a tiny bit of the detail Christians believe. That Jesus is the source of life itself.