Lessons:

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #1
The Good and Beautiful Life

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #2
The Gospel You May Not Have Heard

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #3
The Grand Invitation

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #4
Anger

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #5
Lust   

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #6
Honesty

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #7
Bless Those Who Curse You

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #8
Learning to Live Without Vainglory

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #9
Learning to Live Without Avarice

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #10
Learning to Live Without Worry

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #11
Learning to Live Without Judging

The Good and Beautiful Life, Lesson #12
Living in the Kingdom

Before the summer ended, during one of our many conversations, I ended up telling Ben that the only way to live was to follow Jesus. Ben did not offer much resistance to my statement. Jesus, he said, was brilliant. But he said it was too late for him; he had messed up his life and at the age of seventy-five was beyond redemption. I explained that redemption was God’s favorite activity, regardless of age. During the rest of the summer we met each day, and every session became more and more joyful. We read the Gospels together and talked about mercy and forgiveness and the opportunity to change. By the end of the summer, when it was time for me to leave, Ben offered me a very special gift, a rare copy of an old book he knew I loved. Then he told me that he had decided to follow Jesus, had asked for forgiveness and somehow, in a strange way, felt that God had forgiven him. He showed me a letter he had written to his daughter, asking for her forgiveness. The book was a wonderful gift, but the change I saw in his life over the course of a summer was the best gift of all.

The last time I heard about Ben came when his daughter wrote to me, telling me that Ben had died at age eighty-eight. She said they had reconciled, and Ben had come to a saving faith. She said he spent his last years a changed man. Apparently Ben told her about our summer sessions and had asked her to pass on his gratitude. Ben did not live a radiant life, at least for the first seventy-five years. But he was changed and experienced a decade of devotion to God. According to his daughter, Ben died a radiant death.

When in your past have you felt that you could change? What truths from this chapter could you draw on to inspire you that change is possible?

When I think about Ben I think about how change is not only possible but mandatory. Every day we must begin anew. Though the past is written in stone and cannot be changed, the future is like wet cement, pliable, smooth and ready to be affected by what we do. No one is past redemption. All of us have the chance, no matter what we have done or where we have been, to change our minds, hearts and behavior, and to follow the wisest and most loving teacher who ever walked this earth. Each day, Jesus says to each of us, “Come, follow me.” If we say yes, we can be sure that a good and beautiful day awaits us. And when we string those days together into months, years and decades, we will have lived a good and beautiful life. And that life is destined to echo a benediction of love for all of eternity to hear.

James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful Life: Putting on the Character of Christ, The Apprentice Series (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2009), 15–16.

Check out our Bible Study on The Good and Beautiful Life by James Bryan Smith.

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