One With the Divine Life
My Dear People,
"My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways," says the Lord.
-The Prophet Isaiah
Someone asked me last week if I had caught a lot of flack about what I had written, the week before, about capital punishment. I appreciated the question.
While indeed I have gotten some guff over other things I've written (for instance, over what I wrote about the Governor's designation of "Confederate History Month"), for what it's worth, I got no guff for the piece I wrote on capital punishment. But, of course, guff is not the point; nor, to put it plainly, is the guff factor a dependable measure of much of anything.
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Last week I wrote about how what's really important is not what we think, but what God thinks; the Ultimate Dependable Measure, you might say: that we don't want to settle merely for opinions, or, if you will, for truth with a lower case "t," but that we aspire to something larger and higher than ourselves and our own thoughts; we want the Truth, with a capital "T." In a word, being Christians, we want what God wants, and so we seek, as Paul said, to put on the mind of Christ, so that we will know what God wants, and so that we can do what God wants us to do.
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Well, okay. But what does that mean?
I believe that it means to seek, and to never stop seeking, a deeper union with God in Christ, so that our thoughts become his thoughts, and our ways become his ways, more and more, and still more.
Okay, but what does that mean?
Fair question.
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How do we put on the mind of Christ? How do we think as God thinks? Or, to put it still another way, how do we find the wisdom of God?
Well, first, some things should be clear from the start: Try as we might, we're never going to get it all right all the time; that is for sure. Indeed, there is nothing more essential to the quest for wisdom than humility. And there is nothing that gets in the way of true wisdom more, or more quickly, than self-righteousness.
So, with humility as our starting place, close behind humility must be patience. Our era has been called "the age of the quick fix." We must be absolutely clear that quick fixes do not lead to wisdom. We are in this for the long haul. For eternity, for that matter. And true wisdom comes only with staying, and waiting, and listening.
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But (way) above all, we must remember that this comes down to relationship; to a relationship; a living relationship with a living God. And it is that God, and that relationship with that God, that we seek every time we pray; every time we worship; and every time we open a Bible. And for that matter, in truth, consciously or not, it is that God we seek with every breath we breathe and every thought we have.
As the great Augustine said, "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee."
So then, as our living relationship with the Living God deepens, we pray that our mind and our thoughts, and the whole of our lives, become more and more one with the Divine Life.
This is our prayer. This is our hope.
This is our salvation.
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The collect for this coming Sunday says it all:
Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Your brother in Christ,
Wallace+
