a few thoughts on faith (with help from oswald)

It certainly doesn't help the homesickness to have heard the British accent all morning and also in the Jan. Series, but I'll settle for saying that it has been bittersweet. In feeling a certain alienation from the States and a disconnection from Britain, it's a comfort to have read, during Freston's lectures this morning, an excerpt from Diognetus:

"For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe... They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citezens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers."

On a somewhat different, yet somewhat related, note...

Through this class and other things that I've been reflecting on, I'm overwhelmed with the sense that Christianity is oh-so-simple, and yet (as Richard Foster comically comments about one of the disciplines) "It is that simple. I wish I could make it more complicated for those who like things difficult" (Celebration of the Disciplines 17) It seems as though those who "like things difficult" have won out in the end, hasn't it? Our world is full of flighty doctrines and vague ideas about Christ and His life, until we have gotten to the point where, as I have, I may be sitting in a lecture, or in a chapel, and hear profound things about the Life of Christ and God's entity that have never occured in my mind before. I am dumbstruck, alarmed that these things are such new concepts despite that I have grown up in the Christian faith all of my life. It is not because these things are complicated, and that it is only till now that my mind is mature enough to understand them, rather, they are so simple and so ordinary that they've slipped past me, and I fear so many know what I mean, without notice.


Hm.

In Oswald Chamber's book this morning, I felt that one part jumped out at me as a summary of the convictions I've felt in the past few days about being closer to Christ:

"No matter what changes God has wrought in you, never rely on them, and build only on a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and on the Spirit He gives. All our vows and resolutions end in denial [like Peter] because we have no power to carry them out. When we have come to the end of ourselves, not in imagination but really, we are able to receive the Holy Spirit" (Utmost for His Highest 5).

This struck me so much, simply because I am aware of the changes that God has "wrought" in me. It is so tempting for my pride to build up on those changes, and essentially create a flimsy new "character" that will soon crack and reveal the things that were never healed by Grace, rather than building up on Christ for those changes to take root.

I think another key word in that passage was "resolutions" simply because of the New Year and our tendency to create resolutions we cannot keep. I'm guilty of this; right before me on the bulletin board is a list of my New Years Resolutions for 2007. While those resolutions are good and healthy, I must remember that the real changes occur within and manifest into external actions.

Now, dear friends, I have a meeting with an old friend soon, and I ought to get ready for that. I ran into Kristin Bush at the January Series, and we're going to meet and catch up. :)

♥
betsy joy