Saved? Here's what Willimon thinks.
The smug "I'm saved, how about you?" betrays the grace of God as a daily, ongoing, continually awakening, and surprising gift of emergent awareness. We are saved by the completed work of Christ, yet it is also true that we are graciously, moment-by-moment being saved. We thus may joyfully anticipate that time, that place when we shall be fully "saved," closer to the heart of God than we ever dreamed or dared imagine. Paul says that he, and indeed the whole creation, is "groaning" in agony for such complete redemption (Romans 8:22).
This image of salvation be stuck back to a particular place and time reminds me of a term a use quite a bit to talk about salvation. I am not "saved" as though I now have a membership card. Rather, I am a part of God's saving community - having my life shaped by this ongoing love of God that graciously encounters all of God's people in every place and time. It is ongoing. It does not come once, tickle us, and then go away. Being God's saving people does not mean I am out there hunting folks and trying to get them in an eternity club. I would say it is more like the love of God that keep grasping me and holding me and molding me, presents me and you to the world as love alive. It is never the complete love of the Reign of God...it is active, moving, stretching, leaping, and learning how to become flesh among us. It is in that incarnate form (that's us) that others see what God's love bring to life in us...forever.
Connection: Therefore, in and through all things of this day - we are a part of this loving God who finds ways to open our hearts to express that love and alter the shape of how life can be lived. What a surprise we may be to others!
Within what is simple and so regular within this day, O God, let the seeds of your saving love begin to show forth through our lives as blossoms of new life fed by your love. Amen.
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