It's January 1st, 2006. A new year has rolled around. I am old enough to remember when 1984 was a long way off. That year held the promise of the dire predictions associated with the book 1984. But the years have continued to pile up, and now we have arrived at 2006.
For my own good, if no one else's, I want to remind myself of some challenging aspirations I originally compiled some years ago. The Christian life is full of paradoxes, and one of the most profound is that we find our lives by losing them. Personal meaning is found in being the channel of God's love and grace to others. This we cannot manufacture on our own. We must be united with God through prayer and self-surrender.
Mother Teresa captures this very vividly in her prayer,
"Dear Lord, help me to spread thy fragrance everywhere I go. Flood my soul with thy spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of thine." - Life in the Spirit, p. 9
"Pray--pray for grace, pray that you may understand how Jesus has loved you so that you may love others, and pray for us that we may not spoil God's work." Life in the Spirit, p. 18.
She wrote the following on being light in a dark world:
"Often you see small and big wires, new and old, cheap and expensive electric cables up -- they alone are useless and until the current passes through them there will be no light. The wire is you and me. The current is God. We have the power to let the current pass through us and use us to produce the light of the world or we can refuse to be used and allow the darkness to spread. . . Let his light of truth be in every person's life so that God can continue loving the world through you and me. . . Put your heart into being a bright light." - Life in the Spirit, p. 7
To what she wrote may be added the words of C.S. Lewis, the great British writer, now made even more famous through the movie version of his book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He wrote,
“Our whole destiny seems to lie in. . . acquiring a fragrance that is not our own but borrowed, in becoming clean mirrors filled with the image of a face that is not ours.” - “Christianity and Literature” in Christian Reflections, p. 6.
This, in turn, seems a remarkable variation of what the Apostle Paul wrote to some early Christians in what would now be modern Greece:
“Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.” - II Corinthians 3:18 (The Message)
These are powerful thoughts. And yet, they shouldn't be strange to us, for what is "salvation" if it does not involve "transformation"?
May the New Year find us all growing deeper into the transformation God intends for us all.
* * *
Some years ago I picked up a little wall plaque that captured my attention. I still think it states things extremely well.
“Why were the saints saints?
Because they were cheerful
when it was difficult to be cheerful,
patient when it was
difficult to be patient;
and because they pushed on
when they wanted to stand still,
and kept silent when they
wanted to talk,
and were agreeable when they
wanted to be disagreeable.
That was all.
It was quite simple and
always will be.