Nowadays it can be a little risky to read the bumper sticker on the car in front of you.  All too often they are inappropriate, rude, and offensive - and that's just the religious stickers!  Sometimes bumper stickers can be amusing, too.  You just have to hope for the best when you start reading.  To be helpful I screened a few for you. 

• Honk if kid falls out
• Sorry for driving so close in front of you
• Don't believe everything you think
• If you can read this...big deal.  Most people can read.
• 26.2 (number of Oreos I can eat in one sitting)
• "My mind was changed by a bumper sticker" said no one ever
• child huge financial burden on board
• (on a minivan) I used to be cool

Sometimes you see a fish sticker or fish emblem on a bumper - which usually means the driver is a Christian (and hopefully drives like a Christian).  But why a fish?

The fish symbol - drawn by two intersecting arcs - is often referred to as an ichthys because that is the Greek pronunciation of the word fish. Christians began using the symbol back in the 2nd century as a means of identification. The church was under persecution at the time, and when people would meet on the street one would draw an arc in the dust. If the other responded by drawing another arc and completing the fish, both would know they were in the presence of another believer. It was a secret symbol of sorts.

In addition, the five Greek letters that form the word fish - ἸΧΘΥΣ, or iota, chi, theta, epsilon, sigma - we're also used as an acrostic for the phrase which when translated into English reads "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior."

Stories of fish and fisherman are woven through the gospels. Jesus followers were told they would become fishers of men. Thus, it seems appropriate that the early church would adopt this symbol that we still use today. On bumper stickers.

Have you ever thought about how bumper stickers communicate? They express to the world what you, the owner of the car, are like and how you think. As Jesus' followers, our lives serve like bumper stickers to the world - telling who Jesus is and how he loves. Our lives communicate so much to others, and not just in pithy little statements splashed on vinyl stickers.

The question is, what does your life, what does my life communicate about Jesus and the Christian faith?

Do our lives communicate self-righteousness, judgmentalism, militancy, narrow-mindedness, unhappiness, anger, etc.? Or do our lives communicate compassion, kindness, love, selflessness, humility, service, friendliness, grace, etc.?

We have so many positive ways that we can reach out to the world, but do we? Or are we too content to simply put a bumper sticker on our car that probably only Christians understand. Wouldn't it be better if we took a different approach? What if we accepted our role as human bumper stickers? What if we became the way that people experience Jesus and his love, and not just by how we live, but also by what we say and share?

 I have no problem with fish or any other Christian bumper stickers, I'm just not sure how much difference they make in today's world.  But that was never the plan.  Bumper stickers are not in the Bible, I'm positive.  The plan was that we would be salt and light and difference-makers ourselves.  That we would live out the love of Jesus.  That we would be known for the good that we bring to the world