Thursday, May 8, 2008

life is better off a mystery

There is a certain mystery to our days. But they don't seem too mysterious unless we really choose to enter into the greater reality. Sometimes it's so much easier to stand on the sidelines of life and watch from a safe distance as other people do work, live life, and help other people. In fact it's much easier to take a seat in a lawnchair and watch all the patient activity, observing and critiquing yet never getting out of the chair.

I suppose this is the way that many of us live life. I guess by "us" i'm referring to college students, but you could maybe broaden it out to include a bigger part of society. Whatever the case, I think all this cynicism is getting us nowhere.

The sidelines. Oh what a great place to be. There is no difficulty there, there is no movement required. There is really nothing at all that challenges. In that space a yawn is louder than a whisper.

Honest to goodness, though, I'm flat out tired of all the watching that is going on. All the analyzing. All the comfortable cynicism, leaving only enough room for a tolerable amount of faith.

Brother Paul seemed to be pretty tired of this too. In Letters dripping with truth, Paul shows over and over again that faith is a process, indeed a work in progress. Faith is a beautiful thing, and its free, but there's hard work involved. We've seemed to grab hold of the whole justification part of salvation, without realizing the whole Kingdom coming down into us, transforming us into Lighthouses in a dark world.

There is something to be said about quiet faith, seeing needs and meeting them. There is something to be said about a quiet faith, diving headfirst daily into the waters of the Word. There's something there that we moderns can learn from.

Faith is a daily thing. It is both inside us like a burning fire and is evident outside of us like a glowing candle.

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