The prophet Isaiah quotes our God as saying: "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:19)
The Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Philippians: …. straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14)
God is still moving, still speaking. Faith, therefore, should not be static either. But rather a process, a journey, a Way of life.
Isaiah proclaims: I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? Or are you set in seeing and knowing God the same way you did five years ago? ten years ago? thirty years ago?
Paul writes: pressing (straining) forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Do you share that goal? Are you mindfully on a journey toward that heavenly prize?
In our prayers we regularly pray that, as a people, we might be transformed and conformed into the mind of Christ. There are many reasons, of course, to go to church. But the most important is that going to church makes transformation happen. In church we have an abundant opportunity to cultivate what Walter Brueggermann calls a “healthy imagination.”
There are, in our world and environment, all kinds of images and words, reports and data that can fill our minds and take over our eyeballs with unhealthy things that sap our lives. In church, we have the opportunity to engage our hearts, our minds, our souls, our bodies, in healthy and life-giving ways. Let us become the people God calls us to be. May we be transformed! May we know Whose we are and Who we are in Christ!
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