What is real?

Ever wonder what in the world is real? I get caught up in that all the time. When I'm with my Spirit-filled friends, I feel that the spiritual realm is most real. When I'm with my mother, I feel like getting the gutters cleaned out is the most real.

I was at a birthday party last Sunday for the 2-year-old grandson of my next-door neighbor. There didn't seem to be any Christians there, and all the talk was lighthearted banter about baseball-which for those two hours seemed more real than my spiritual life. I started thinking I may be an "imbalanced" person in my constant preoccupation with Jesus. "Religion is all well and good," I nearly said to myself, "but there's more to life than talking about salvation. … All things in moderation. …"

These days after "9/19" it is interesting to turn on the radio. Most of the time they're talking about "the bailout"-which temporarily makes that subject seem most real. But just now I tuned in and there was a breezy interview of a musician. That made me think, "Well now, let's put this economic sticky patch into perspective. Life goes on, and there will always be the arts and culture, long after the bailout is a footnote in history.

C.S. Lewis writes about a man sitting alone in the British Museum who is on the verge of spiritual enlightenment. That's God working on him. But the devil is at work, too, and manages to derail the man's thinking with a grumbling stomach. The man shakes off his spiritual meditation with mild embarrassment, brought back to his senses by the sights and sounds of newspaper hawkers and the 73 bus, and other reassuring reminders of "real life."