Leave Some Trace

Discussion Questions

1. Read Matthew 7:12-28, part of Jesus’s sermon on the mount. Then read the devotional, “Leave Some Trace.”
2. When have you given someone’s bad behavior the “benefit of the doubt” because of their appearance, position, and/or affiliations? Have you ever missed someone’s good work because you prejudged their appearance, position, or affiliation?
3. What traces of goodness do you hope to leave behind with your life?
4. How do the good fruits of your congregation nurture the community?

Devotional

[Jesus taught them, saying,] “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.” – Matthew 7:15-17 (NRSV)

Ichnology is the study of trace fossils. Not the big T-Rex skeleton at your natural history museum. Or even the shark’s teeth you hunt for in the creek behind your house. Not fossils of the thing itself at all, only of the traces it left behind.

Million-year-old footprints frozen in stone. Tunnels and burrows preserved for posterity. Bite marks and claw marks etched into bone. The ichnologist studies not what was there but what it did. Or rather, she studies what was there by studying what it did.

Which Jesus says is also how you’ll know who really speaks for God.

Not by who they are, which can be deceiving. Not by their position, denomination, nationality … not by looking at them at all. But only at what they did, how they lived, what remains:

The tracks they made marching in solidarity with those who were suffering. The tunnels they dug to undermine systems of injustice and oppression. The evidence they left of fighting tooth and nail in the cause of love.

The good that came from it all.

“You will know them by their fruits.” By what they left behind. Their traces. Which live on, long after they are gone.

Prayer
God, thank you for those who have left their mark.