How Be Ye?

I always liked the pastor of the small church that I grew up in. After almost every church service on Sunday, he would stand at the front door as people walked out. I was a self-conscious teenager in high school wrestling with many of the things that teenagers wrestled with in high school (except for the drugs) and always thought that he might have some special "God power" to look past the surface to see the turmoil that was beneath.

Almost without fail, each Sunday, Doug would shake my hand and ask me the question, "How be ye?" I always thought he was being funny (speaking in Old Testament preacher-ese) and I would chuckle and respond "I be ye fine, how be ye?" He would chuckle also and say "Fine, fine."

WHEW... maybe he really didn't know exactly what I was doing the night before or what I was really thinking about during that second prayer... don't take any chances though... quick, get in the car and go to lunch!

As I look back on that exchange today, I think he was really asking a GREAT question. Whether he realized it or not, he was asking a question that gets to the the core of "Who are you being, Who are you becoming, Who are you growing into?" and maybe the best question... "What are you doing today to build the character of the person that will face the success and the failure in your future?"

It's still a GREAT question for me today. It's a question that, if you really think about it, goes far beyond the superficial "How are you", a question that people seldom answer truthfully these days anyway, and strikes at the core of who a person really is and what is taking place in their heart.

"How be ye?" probably isn't a question that we would ask anyone these days... even if we updated it to the grammatically incorrect modern speak of "How be you?" But it is a question that we should probably ask ourselves daily.

So Mark.... "How be ye today?"

Be Before Do

Decide what you want to BE in life before you decide what you want to DO in life. Ultimately, WHO you are will become apparent in WHAT you do.