The life of faith is characterized by a strange dialectic, where two seeming opposites are in creative tension. What this looks like is that we have been given grace, but need to ask for it; we have been forgiven in Christ, but need to seek forgiveness; we have been found by the seeking God, but need to find the God who has already embraced us.
St. Anselm understands this. He prays this prayer to Christ: “My Lord and my Creator, you bear with me and nourish me—be my helper. I thirst for you, I hunger for you, I desire you, I sigh for you, I covet you.”2 This prayer expresses the further longing of someone who has already come home to the heart of God. Homecoming is only a beginning. Growth in relationship and intimacy is the great desire, for enough is never enough in the intimacy of love.
The life of faith, therefore, is a life of response and longing. We
respond in love, worship, and service to the God who has first reached out to us. And we long to know more fully the God who already knows us and has called us into the wide spaces of his presence. In the art of longing we lean into what may yet be and what we may yet become.
Thought
The longing heart is the heart already gently touched by the Great Lover.
1 John 3:18
January 3
The Mark of the Christian
First and foremost we do not bear the mark of our church or our denomination, but we bear the grace and presence of Christ whose death on our behalf and whose welcome and
empowerment issue in a life of love and service.
In our modern world being a Christian can mean far too many things: being a Westerner, holding a belief in God’s existence, being a political conservative, being committed to justice issues, being an emotional Pentecostal, being an activist Evangelical, being a highbrow church person. The list could go on and on.
But all of these attempts to typify miss the mark. The heart of
Christianity is about knowing God the creator and redeemer who brings us to fullness of life in Christ through the Spirit.
The heart of being a Christian is to bear the mark of Christ. That mark symbolized in baptism means to come to new life and to be graced by the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s gifts. And it is the Spirit’s pleasure to ground us in Christ and to make us more Christlike.
The Christian life, therefore, does not first and foremost move us
towards something, but issues out of something: God’s indwelling presence. From this presence comes the desire for worship and obedience and the longing to love and serve. It is the indwelling presence of God rather than the external law of God that truly empowers us.
St. Ignatius of Antioch is, therefore, right: “we have not only to be called Christians, but to be Christians.”3 And to be Christians means that Christ must ever more take shape in us.
Thought
The more we are like Christ, the more fruitful our lives will be.
Psalm 69:16–17
January 4
Walking by Faith
While we love to bask in the light of God’s presence with us, we also have to learn to walk in the seeming darkness of God’s strange absence. Streams of living water and the desert are part of the Christian experience.
There is not one color to the Christian life. There is no single pattern to Christian spirituality and there is no singular theological theme that captures God’s wisdom. But there is complexity. There is revelation. There is growth. There is mystery.
Living the Christian life is full of color. And there are also times of darkness.
There are many contours in the road of faith and we often move between indifference and fervor, despair and hope, faithlessness and obedience.
In the midst of this ever changing landscape of the journey of faith, Meister Eckhart poses an important question for us: “When you are in low condition, and feel forsaken, see if you are just as true to him [God] as when your sense of him is most vivid and if you act the same when you think all help and comfort [is] far removed as you do when God seems nearest.”4
This penetrating question lays bare our motivations in the spiritual life. The answer is that by ourselves we would probably waver in the dark place. But God can firmly hold us even by his seemingly absent presence. Even in the darkest of places we can grow in faith.
Reflection
God reveals and hides himself. When the latter occurs we are called to great trust, attentiveness, and faith in the God who will draw us back in time to the open spaces of light.
Romans 5:3–5
January 5
The Struggle of Faith
To know God is to know him as the God of love who enters suffering in order to redeem it. When we enter into the love of God we also enter into God’s suffering for our world.
It is simply not true that because God in Christ has suffered to redeem us, therefore, we will never need to suffer. In Christ, the Christian has become identified with the suffering God who continues in his love for the world to suffer its alienation and waywardness.
In various ways the Christian is called to suffering, particularly in suffering what God suffers.
Thomas à Kempis speaks of a suffering that leads to growth and
maturity: “You cannot win your crown of patience without some struggle. If you refuse suffering, you also refuse the crown.”5
There are also other forms of suffering. Christians suffer the indifference of others. Christians suffer in their witness and service. But Christians most profoundly suffer the pain in the heart of God that has to do with the world’s lack of shalom and wholeness.
As parents suffer the pain of wayward children, God suffers a wayward humanity despite the offer of Christ as the way, the truth, the life. In prayer we are called to be with God in this suffering as we associate with our family, friends, and neighbors who are still far away from the ever open welcome of God.
Thought
Identification with God involves identification with God’s pain for our world.
Matthew 6:33
January 6
First Things First
While Christian discipleship has to do with living all of life to the glory of God and the well-being of others, there are some central impulses from which everything else flows. One of these key springs of life is the desire to do God’s will.
It is important to be attentive to and protect the various tributaries of a river system. But it is most important to safeguard the headwaters of such a system. The place where the river has its source is critical to its far-reaching, life-sustaining ability.
So it is in the Christian life. Everything we say and do has to do with seeking to live in the way of Christ. But the desire for this has a central
impulse and this is the grace and blessing God has poured into lives through the Holy Spirit.
What follows from this central source of inspiration is the desire to live in and for the purposes of God. To seek his kingdom ways. To do his will.
The founder of the Brethren of the Common Life, Geert de Groote, expressed this most clearly: “let me first seek the kingdom [of God] and then I shall so much the better be able to serve my neighbour.”6
Neither our church, nor our mission, nor our own needs are to be central to living the Christian life. God and God’s way and purposes are to be the source from