Bobby shared a little tidbit from a book he is reading for some schooling he is doing – and I’m going to pass it on. It’s beautiful.

Excerpt from ‘The Contemplative Pastor’ by Eugene Peterson.

Christian spirituality means living in the mature whole-ness of the gospel. It means taking all the elements of your life – children, spouse, job, weather, possessions, relationships – and experiencing them as an act of faith. God wants all the material of our lives.

What does it mean to experience all the material of our lives as an act of faith?

That I’m responsible for paying attention to the Word of God right here in this locale. The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it. So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it. 

This is on the same line that George MacDonald was getting at in ‘Sir Gibbie’: 

The one secret of life and development is not to devise and plan, but to fall in with the forces at work – to do every moment’s duty aright – that being the part in the process allotted to us; and let come – not what will, for there is no such thing – but what the eternal Thoughts wills for each of us, has intended in each of us from the first.

And both of these point at what Jesus was getting at when he said, 

“Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you…. I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing.” John 15 (MSG)

Falling in line with Jesus. Knowing Him; that is all He is asking of any of us. Resting and living in the hope and love of Our Eternal Father. Real and Eternal life is not for tomorrow – but for now. John 17 — “And this is real and eternal life: that they know you, the one and only true God.”

Lord, let it be so. How sweet your name is Jesus.