16,874 days later . . .

. . .  and still a Christian!

So much for the passing fad my Father assumed my ‘religious’ experience all those years ago  to be!

46 years, 2 months, 12 days ago I made the conscious decision to accept that Jesus was not only God but that He died for me (on a cross) so that I could be reconciled to the God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Not an emotionally charged experience -  as a budding scientist and three years into engineering training I looked for things that made sense.

I asked questions of the man sharing Jesus with me and he gave answers (as best he could). He invited questions and held up a mirror to my actions which, illuminated by the light of a love which I didn't deserve, made the offer before me seem like too good a thing to pass up. The more I asked the more questions I had and yet the answers joined some of the dots such that I couldn’t walk away and bin it as rubbish. The inner resonance caused me to merely look further.

Just as I was excited by the science and engineering around me (and I still am today) so too was I excited by the theology of this Jesus stuff; yet the more I read the more I realised how little I knew. The only assured facts were my own massive ignorance (a sentiment I share with Socrates and Einstein)!

So here I am: Flawed, fallen and not always as nice as some might think or expect. 

I’ve buried loved ones, been alone and rejected. I’ve been lied to (and responded in the same vein).  My life has been amazingly blessed but this was despite many sad and dark moments: After all being Christian still sees us live in a world of challenges and pain. 

I’m a husband, a father, a brother, a friend and a follower of Jesus. I seek to show His love to those around me and I strive to find the merest hint of a glimpse of hope that I might look like Jesus to those around me.

I read my Bible: Not to please God but to explore the resonances within me from the words before me that I might grow in my faith.

I pray: Not to get stuff but to develop the potential within me to live in the emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual places that surround me and sometimes threaten to breach the walls that protect me. Prayer is about reminding me how important things are, not to get what I want from God! I pray to survive the storms rather than demand that they stop.

I bless others:Not because I’ll get something from them but because by doing so I walk to the heartbeat of the God I follow and bring about the realities of His love to those around me. 

The Christian life brings so many things. But they’re not riches or fame or possessions or applause (perhaps I’m doing it wrong and should get into the prosperity thing!). I’ve seen tragedies which looking back were triumphs. I been cheated on, lied to, stolen from, abused, misused and treated so awfully (and much of that was just the Christians!!) and yet all I can find is love, healing, acceptance and a peace that the world can’t sell or afford to buy because of the love of a God who became human and died for me.

In World War II, a Jewish inmate in the Auschwitz concentration camp, was sentenced to death as a retaliation for an escape. The man cried out how he needed to live for his wife and children. Hearing this a Franciscan Friar, Maximilian Kolbe, stepped forward and swapped places with him. Kolbe spent the next ten days in a starvation pit, leading the people with Him in prayer until only he remained alive. The guards eventually shot him - but the man whose place he took survived the camp and vowed that having been given his life back - for it should have been him who died - vowed that he would live each day differently because of Kolbe’s selfless act of love and sacrifice.

This is the same reason I continue to follow Jesus and live to love and praise my God. For I too was dead and through an act of love by Jesus on the cross, I have been given my life back to reside in the fullness of God’s love now and for all eternity.

This I have found to be true. What more can there be than this: That Jesus died for me to reconcile me to the Godhead and to hand me back a life that was otherwise as good as dead.

And tomorrow it will be 16,875 days I have followed Jesus the Christ - and there’s room for companions on that road. Come join me and let me introduce you to a man (Jesus) who knew everything I’d ever done, or was going to do, and yet He took my place and gave me back my life and you yours and made true the fact that nothing you’ve seen, nothing you’ve been, nothing you done, or will do, can separate us from the love of God.

Pax

Discipleship - the answer to the Church's prayers?

An interesting discussion relating to how the salvation of the Church is to be found in 'discipleship' has challenged me because whilst I don't disagree with what the words might mean - I do struggle with the attitude that looks at people doing because they have to rather than them doing because they have the desire - and that this desire comes about through an emerging spiritual identity and  consistent, prayerful and holistic spirituality.

A recent conversation with a number of clergy colleagues brought into the clear a consensus view that the numbers of those who came and were happy merely to attend church on a fairly regular basis but were put off by being asked to become involved. As one person put it, 'No matter what we do, we can't get them to do anything - they are content to just come and be served!'

And so I walk a tightrope that sees me working to help people find their identity with, and in, God through Christ and to come to that place of initial stillness that leads them into a place of increasingly secure, and enabling, Christian spirituality which cements the forgiveness and acceptance of the cross and, in combination with teaching, and unfolding of the words within, leads them to a place whereby their baptismal (and other) calling can be made real: and from here the life, and Church, enabling that is being a true disciple can be manifest.

Discipleship is a lifestyle choice and act, not something that can be imposed or demanded and it is our role to sow the seeds and nurture them in those we are called to pastor - this is our mission and our joy, for surely it is the Missio Dei - to engender in self, and others, the heartbeat of Christ and the becoming like Him in heart, mind and (of course) action.

Pax