Ancient Words, long preserved

The back of the t-shirt I wore to work yesterday once had the following written on it:
YOU CAN TAKE A MILLION STEPS AWAY FROM GOD
BUT IT'S NEVER MORE THAN ONE STEP BACK.

Someone at a Bible study I was part of three or four years ago said that during one of our meetings and it hit me like a blowdart to the neck. I put it on the back of my shirt with fabric paints because I thought it was something that people should hear. Screw it - that's something people should hear. A Kanye West lyric that says, "I wanna talk to God but I'm afraid cuz it's been so long," always makes me to sadness. Not ripe & rich sadness but I know he's not the only one who thinks the doorway to communing with God exists in a lush forest that gets over grown with strong vines and high plants (poisonous? thorny?) the longer you leave it alone. Frequent visits make the path more travelled by, n'est-ce pas?
Anyways, it's something I want people to know (it hits a myth I wish to dispell) BUT I think it also comes from an ideal angle for making the kind of impression that I'd like to. There are obvious & easy ways to start a conversation from that phrase (not by me but others) AND it's also something you can put in your back pocket and take home with you. I like it because it means the READER gets to decide whether they want to engage me. I just be wearin truth on my back...that's all.

These days most of the paint has fallen off (I have touched it up before but now it's different) and I don't wear the shirt as often as I once did. Hmmmm. I like that the words are obscured because it allows me to be a coward. On the other hand, it can force me to be distinctly UNcowardly when someone asks what it says and I must TELL them all verbal like, not just turn around and curve my shoulders in.

One of my coworkers started reading then gave up so I had to tell him.

"Hm! That's very philosophical of you."
"Yep." (It's been a long time since I've been faithly confronted.)
"I'll probably be dreaming about that all night."
"Haha... well good."

Today when I saw him again he said, "I'm still thinking about that million gazillion...." And in the brief ensuing exchange I started to seriously wonder if he had actually gotten the idea but..for the fact that it burned his brain he must have. I thought maybe... I hope there was no...salvation-by-works-ness being considered. I think not.

I'm reminded of the other shirt I wrote on the back of.
NO GUILT IN
LIFE
NO FEAR IN
DEATH

I was wearing that when I went to the front of a class (which functions as a performance hall so the seating is staggered quite high and when you're playing the one grand piano in the middle of the floor, people see you). It was a piano, I wanted to play it, class was cancelled and peeps was leaving, end of justification. As he left, a dude came up to me and showed me that he had copied down all the words from the back of my shirt. I really wish I could remember what he said to me and I him. What I do know is that we eventually had a real conversation and I still talk to him a year and a half later. I have no idea if he got it...To me the words make so much sense and have so much value because of the line which follows and completes them: THIS IS THE POW'R OF CHRIST IN ME. What a way to go...
But looking at it without Christ, that's just another "you can do it if you put your mind to it" slogan, isn't it? Boo. Something to think about.