Too Late?

I think a confession is needed, and I must come clean. If I don’t do it now, I might never be able to muster the courage again. As an explanation, this ‘thing’ didn’t happen to me overnight. It took ages for me to be aware of my failing, and even then only slowly. I called it a failing, but is it? Really??

The human body grows quite slowly compared to other species on our planet. As each phase comes and is replaced by the next one, we accept the changes as necessary. We dare not go into our teen years looking and thinking like a toddler. And similarly, our ageing bodies are not as strong and cannot react the way we did in mid life. By the time we are in the ‘end of life’ phase, we do not even remotely resemble our baby self. This is progress. It’s life, and we embrace it.

Why do I not embrace the changing faith years in the same way? The baby and toddler years when proper teaching was made in simple forms, followed by the teen years when the meat of the word was essential, and outreach performed with ease. The mid life years brought a crisis of the questioning heart, not to doubt but to learn because we never want to stop growing. By the time we reach the ‘end of faith’ years, we try to grasp at the younger times when everything was simpler and easier. Salvation was contagious and churches were full with people being reborn into the Kingdom almost without effort. Simply put, I want to go back.

Here’s the problem with my analogy. Everyone born starts at the same place in growth and progress, right through to our end of life phase. Then the cycle always restarts without change and growth is guaranteed. However, the faith years are not treated in the same way. Our ‘progressive’ church leaders seem to want our successive years of growth to be constant and without repeat. Or to put it another way, each generation at their faith birth, should start where the previous generation’s end of faith years left off. Using this as a model of church growth is it any wonder that we fall short? That kind of growth cannot be sustained in either the human being, or the faith model.

My confession about being too late is this: Do I keep running on the treadmill of artificial church growth, or should I let my faith journey be what it is supposed to be at each stage? If I stay on the treadmill, the progressives will applaud, but will it grow my faith or that of my church? On the other hand if I get off the spinning wheel I will be branded as a dinosaur and no one wants that. What do you think? Is it too late to stop the treadmill and get off? At least that would be good for my blood pressure. Perhaps it might not be a bad thing to be a dinosaur after all! Another, and better question is: Can, or should we even try, to reinvent the gospel or is it fine the way it was originally given for all ages and for all time in the Bible?

One of the dictionary definitions of ‘dinosaur’ is “a person or thing that is outdated or has become obsolete because of failure to adapt to changing circumstances.”

Here and There

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 3:20

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 2 Corinthians 4:7

Like all Christians, I like, yes even look forward to the very thought of spending an eternity in heaven. I will see my Saviour there, and I will also see special family, friends and loved ones. What’s not to like? That’s the ‘there and then’, but what about the ‘here and now’?

I was reminded by a recent visiting pastor that while we ‘await’ our eternity in heaven, we must live our lives in the best way we can, before shuffling off this mortal coil. But we are imperfect and flawed. We are sinners only saved by grace, and in the sight of a Holy God. How then can we live up to the standard of our promised Holy eternity? The truth is, we can’t. We are human, and live in jars or pots of clay. As I was reminded, some of us are ‘crack(ed) pots’, or sometimes seen as crackpots by those who look on.

Our jars of clay, these human, earthly bodies, host a treasure, and we should never lose sight of this. Our ‘pots’ may be getting old and cracked, but our treasure within is perfect. Our job is simple. Use our plain, ordinary lives to point to Jesus within. After all, our body will fail us, but the treasure we hold is pure, eternal and Holy. That is what must be seen. So while we wait perhaps even impatiently for eternity, let us show this unfailing treasure within to all we meet. We just need to be transparent. Can you and I do this small thing in the ‘here and now’? Look at it this way, we need those cracks to let the inner light of our treasure to shine through. Looks like being a crack(ed) pot isn’t such a bad thing after all!!