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’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
5 comments:
Yes, I can! Not for the glory or recognition, but for the love of God. Not as a vicar, curate or lay reader, but as a Sunday school attendee eventually becoming old enough to become a church chorister. Joining my local church choir as a young probationer chorister, in the late fifties at the age of nine years. Singing has enabled me not only to sing in my own church, but other churches and cathedrals, on radio and television! Decade upon decade of singing and praising the Lord. I have enjoyed every minute of it, and long may I continue!
I haven't counted the days because i Was absent from God's company for over 20 years, although, I now realise that he was with me all along, even though I chose to ignore him.
faith, I have become, a better, in flawed person.
I tried to see where he wanted me to be, went on a mistaken journey towards priesthood, and was rejected and felt abandoned. But people like you, encouraged me to persevere, and I've stuck with it. Just had my license as a Reader renewed for three years, despite it taking me past my 70th Birthday. So, God obviously has plans, that I can't yet comprehend.
Perhaps our forthcoming vacancy will provide some insight. But sticking with it seems the best thing to do, I won't abandon God again as I once did. And the excitement involved is worth living with, along with the uncertainty of what comes next.
Hadn’t realised you were about to have a vacancy. Where are they off to?
Praying you get the right person :-)
V
Thanks for this - really inpsiritaional
My Vicar is retiring in November. Our curate left for pastures new earlier this year. Our other Reader is to be Ordained in September and curating in a new parish. We have a retired Priest available, but in his eighties, he is in great demand across the Deanery for his services. We will have visiting Clergy during the vacancy, and we're already making contacts to try to get ahead of the game.
Our previous curate has an 'interim' role across the diocese, so really busy all of the time, not sure about how the vacancy will go, there seems to be an average of 9 months of vacancy before a new incumbent is appointed. But recent local experience is of candidates being interviewed but than taking a different role. So, perhaps some talent spotting needed by the Arch Deacon?
But we are armed with two, youngish, efficient church wardens and a lively congregation, so hopefully the impact will be positive as we work cooperatively to discern the needs of the parish in the future.
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