Weekly Meditations

All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.   Mark 4:28

A friend of mine is doing a doctorate in spiritual formation and studying Imago Dei as a model of spiritual direction-in-community.  We got together a little while ago to discuss the process of formation that has been evident in our Imago Dei communities over the years.  It provided me with a rare opportunity to describe a pattern of growth that I’ve seen often repeated in people’s lives as they bear the particular fruit the Spirit cultivates among us.  As many of you are in such groups, I thought it would be good to share what we have observed.

The overall objective of Imago Dei’s ministry is similar to the old adage that motivates missionaries: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach him how to fish and you feed him for life.”  Our hope is not to establish ourselves as the local fish market, where people come to be fed for a day, but to teach and encourage people to fish on their own—to seek and find God through prayer so that they can become who they are called to be in this world.

The vocabulary of spiritual direction that we use at Imago Dei resonates deeply with the invitation many people feel God already making to their hearts.  They seem appreciative of the language we speak, and the emphasis we share in our discussions.  This language allows us to communicate our deepest yearnings for God, and the truth we seek in our innermost beings.  It both affirms what we believe is possible for the spiritual life, as well as provides the basis for a dialogue that encourages a life of prayer, in the context of community.

Though our emphasis is mostly on personal prayer, I would assume many people attend Imago Dei groups for weeks, months or even years before ever establishing a regular discipline of prayer for themselves.  In the meantime they glean from others who have cultivated these practices in their own lives, and their hearts are kindled in the direction of such hope for themselves.

Through the consistent fanning of their desire for God, people do eventually develop a more disciplined prayer life.  They enter the “school of prayer” where the Holy Spirit helps them negotiate the ebbs and flows of the flesh that contest the primacy of God in their lives.  Prayer soon becomes non-negotiable.   They recognize it as the hub around which all else revolves, and gladly submit to God’s initiatives in their hearts, and in their circumstances.  At this point, whether they realize it or not, they have become sources of encouragement and motivation to others who hope to establish a similar priority in their own lives.

A significant sign of maturity happens in people when they begin to look outward, encouraging others in this pilgrimage of trust.  They pursue personal prayer more diligently now, not only for themselves but for the sake of others. They study and equip themselves through books, retreats or courses in order to better serve the mystery of God’s invitation in the lives of others.  Some become leaders of Imago Dei groups, facilitating communities of encouragement where this type of nurturing takes place.  Others train to become spiritual directors, helping people keep to their pilgrimage.  Some who are pastors, convinced of the priority of prayer in their ministry, bring such expressions to the centre of their communities’ self-understanding.  Prayer becomes the catalyst for the Spirit-birthed churches they are becoming.

Such is the path of growth that we are witnessing in the lives of people around us —from the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.  Jesus said, “You will know a tree by its fruit,” (Luke 6:44).  The sustained vitality of spiritual life that many of us are  enjoying is proof indeed that God is doing a good work among us, and that this tree seems blessed by the fruit it bears.  For this we give thanks.

I will give thanks to you, LORD, with all my heart;

I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.

Psalm 9:1

“My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”   Mat. 26:42

In the story of Gethsemane as recorded in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus acknowledges his wish that the occasion for His suffering would be removed.  Like any of us confronted by unwanted circumstances the Lord prays, as we have perhaps often prayed ourselves, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. “

Jesus tables His preference.  But He does so in the posture of a servant who defers to the will of his master as He adds the courageous footnote, “Yet not as I will, but as you will.”   As disagreeable as it is to His human nature, if He must drink the bitter cup, Jesus is prepared to accept His Father’s will.

How often, in our own lives, have we too prayed in the hope that “this cup be taken from me?”  But what happens when God does not answer this prayer?  Where do we go when it becomes apparent that the cup of suffering will not pass?  Jesus faced this reality in Gethsemane  and altered His prayer accordingly.  In the rephrasing of His petition He models for us a disposition that we too might claim when the cup we wish were taken away from us does not pass.

In Matthew’s account of Gethsemane, Jesus prays three times.  His first petition, “if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me,” changes in His second and third prayers to the more resigned, “if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”  Jesus’ prayer evolves from one that expresses His natural and understandable aversion of suffering to one that now prepares Him for the lot He must accept.  It is a prayer that now seeks the grace to endure what cannot be changed.

These two prayers apply to us as well in every anticipated suffering.  We pray, naturally, for the removal of such if possible, but we must also pray beyond this first objective.  If the only petition we make is that suffering be taken from us we will find ourselves dismayed should the cup remain.  Our petition will seem to have failed and God will seem to have deserted us.  We must also be prepared to pray, as Jesus did, “if this cup cannot pass unless I drink it, let your will be done.”

The Lord did not hide from us His aversion to suffering.  The cup, as we know, was not taken from Him.  But what did pass was the fear that it produced in Him.  Whether the cup of suffering remains or is taken away from us, our best hope lies in the same assurance that Jesus draws courage from—that, either way, this is a cup that will surely pass.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!  I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.  I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’  So he got up and went to his father.   Luke 15:17-20

The following is a selected passage from a wonderful book by Charles Péguy called “The Portal of the Mystery of Hope.”  Written in 1912, its poetic theme is the far-reaching influence of Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son.

Among all the three parables of hope,
the parable of the lost sheep;
the parable of the lost coin;
and the parable of the lost child;
though each of them, for nineteen hundred years, have held a special place in the heart of Christians.

Though they are each specially loved,
it is the third parable of hope that advances us,
as if more personal than all the others,
as if answering to a deeper inner voice.

It has awakened in the heart a certain point of resonance
A special resonance.

A man had two sons.
It’s the word of Jesus that has had the greatest effect
On the world.

That has found the deepest resonance
In the world and in humankind.

In the heart of us all.

A man had two sons. Of all of God’s parables
This one has awakened the deepest echo.
The most ancient echo.
The freshest echo.

She is the one who teaches that all is not lost
It is not God’s will
That a single one of these little ones should perish.

When someone turns away, as he buries himself in lost countries, as he loses
himself.
As he tosses along the way his most precious goods,
His most sacred possessions,
even the word of God, his purest treasure,
there is one word of God that he does not throw away.
Because she’s a word that follows him
Into the most extreme estrangements.

There’s no need to look after her, and to carry her.
For it is she who looks after you.

It’s she who follows, she’s a word that stays with you, a treasure that
accompanies you.

She has delivered a challenge to the one who is lost.
‘Listen,’ she has told him,  ‘Wherever you go, I’ll follow.
You’ll see.  For without me you will have no peace.’

And it’s true, and he knows it.  And ultimately he loves that this is true,
Because at the very bottom of his heart, at the bottom of his shame
he is happy to not have peace.  It’s kind of
reassuring.

He knows he will not be forgotten by God.

Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.   Heb. 4:1

There are forces in and around us that would prevent us from reaching the goal of our faith and we are cautioned by the writer of Hebrews to take them seriously.  The more I meet with Christians in spiritual direction, the more convinced I am that the greatest of these is simply our lack of vision for the spiritual life.  We either don’t know or else we keep forgetting the goals of our faith.

It is clear from the New Testament that Christian conversion has a very particular goal or objective.  In Biblical terms, that goal is nothing short of our becoming saints.  As Paul tells the Thessalonians “It is God’s will that you be sanctified” (1Thes. 4:3).  If this is God’s desire, it should certainly be ours as well.  Through increasing surrender to the Holy Spirit, we are called to mirror the sanctity of Christ.  As Peter affirms in such Trinitarian terms, “we have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ” (1Pet 1:2).

In his recent book,”Transforming Conversion,” Gordon Smith reiterates this exalted goal of our Christian life when he writes,

The one thing that counts is to be a saint. This is the fundamental purpose of life. This is what it means to be a Christian, and to mature in faith, hope and love.  One might well say that the only tragedy in a Christian life is the failure to be a saint.

In light of this objective the book of Hebrews tells us to “be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.”  And by simply cultivating our desire to live the sanctified life that God is calling us to we can ensure that we don’t.

We become saints by no other means than that of a life-long response to the invitation of the Holy Spirit to surrender to the vocation of sanctity.  As A.W. Tozer taught,

The vital quality that the saints have in common is spiritual receptivity, urging them Godward.  They have a spiritual awareness and they go on to cultivate it until it becomes the biggest thing in their lives.  They are saints because, when they felt the inward longing of the Spirit, they did something about it.  They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response.

God’s invitation to holiness encourages us to “lay hold of that for which Christ laid hold of us” (Phil. 3:12).  The one thing that counts is to be a saint.  Without such a far-reaching vision we will lose momentum and our motivation for the high calling of our faith.  We will reset our goals to what is more humanly possible, and we will drastically short-change our lives.

Though we are right to anticipate sanctity in our lives, theology recognizes that it is not in our power to achieve it.  Only by participation with the active life of Christ’s Spirit within us do we, in any way, partake in holiness.  It is a vicarious holiness but nevertheless ours to enjoy as the fruit of the Spirit’s sanctifying work within us.  As Smith writes,

The New Testament vision of the Christian life cannot be spoken of without reference to the vital dynamic of life in Christ.  It is also vital for us to recognize that without union in Christ, the goal of the Christian is simply impossible.

Apart from union with Christ, holiness is not only an impossible objective, it’s an oppressive one.  No wonder we are tempted to settle for alternatives that are more in reach of our grasp.  Only God can sanctify us.  But our part, which is to consecrate our lives to God’s desire that we be saints, will ensure that we not fall short of this objective.

Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.  We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.

Heb. 3:14-15

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand.    Heb. 5:11

As a kid I was always fascinated with stories of the north.  Many of these had to do with the Klondike gold rush.  One story often told is of people who would leave everything to go prospecting for gold, discover a vein of gold, stake a claim, and proceed to get down to the business of getting the ore out of the mine.  All would go well at first, but then the vein of gold they had been following would disappear. They had come to the end of the rainbow, or so they thought, and the pot of gold was no longer there.  Giving up in discouragement, they would sell their claim for a few hundred dollars, and take the next train back home.  But then the person who bought the claim would continue digging in the same spot where the former owners had left off.  And often, just a few feet deeper, the new owner would strike gold.

So it is with our growth as Christians.  Like the prospector who lacks tenacity, we can easily assume that there is no more gold left in this claim when really there is a rich vein of ore just a few feet deeper than where we are.  We too need to find motivation to keep growing in our response to God so that we don’t give up prematurely on the promised gold.  Such is the risk we face the longer we’ve been a Christian—that we will stop responding to God’s invitation and settle for something less.

We know very little about the recipients of the letter to the Hebrews other than that, having taken the first steps towards maturity in Christ, they’ve now taken a step back.  According Heb. 5:11, they “no longer try to understand.”   Another way to translate the Greek phrase used here is that they have become “dull with respect to what is heard.”  In other words they hear without effect, without enthusiasm or response.  Immune to the word of God, they no longer feel the same need for conversion as they once did.  No longer do they expect any real challenge or motivation from the Holy Spirit’s prompting, and the writer rebukes them for this when he says, “though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again” (Heb. 5:12).  He compares their immaturity to a baby who drinks only milk.

A baby can’t handle solid foods.  But to continue with milk once it is old enough for a solid diet would not be good.  Not only would it stunt its growth but the baby would always be hungry and unsatisfied as its body craved for something more substantial.  So it is with the recipients of this letter.  They have not progressed to the solid food they should be enjoying by now, and they risk spiritual anemia because of their impoverished diet.

Unfortunately this is what we see in too many Christians these days.  There is a malaise or discouragement among many who grieve that they no longer feel what they used to feel when they were young in the faith. They no longer enjoy the same enthusiasm for worship, preaching, prayer or Scripture as they once did.  And though they grieve their loss of passion, they are no longer sure what to hope for other than an impossible return to where they once were. They are hungry for something more and often feel guilty, believing that this hunger is a sign of their failure to secure the promises they once believed were possible.   And so they find themselves either living with a constant sense of incompletion, or else eventually lowering their expectations of the spiritual life to something more manageable.  Either way they remain unsatisfied because they know they are no longer thriving as they once were.

The writer of Hebrews warns us of such pitfalls if we do not “hold firmly to the end the confidence we had at first” (Heb. 3:14).  If we prematurely stop digging for gold before we have found it, we too will risk similar disappointment.  We are exhorted instead to show diligence in seeking God so that none of us miss out on the promises that still lay ahead of us.  We are assured that there is more gold in the ground, and encouraged to keep digging until we find it.