Wednesday 1 July 2009

Today Willimon turns to C.S. Lewis for more words on salvation and this love of God.

To glory in salvation as a possession, to boast of it as something achieved and now owned, is to show that one is fundamentally confused. C.S. Lewis speaks of his conversion to Christ as an act that God worked in him that was almost coercive in its effect, that time when "God closed in on me" and he came to the cross as "a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction as a chance for escape."
Today there are many who argue that we are smart enough to know that this "God" thing is ridiculous in a thinking and advanced world as ours. And yet, here is this brilliant star who comes to an insight that created a radical new adventure that brought him into a completely new way of living. It was not his intellectual insights that did this. It was when "God closed in on me." It was when Lewis found himself embraced by this expansive love and unable to resists it life-resurrecting power. We can all read much of what this God of ours did to his life as we look the many books he wrote. But it would also be exciting to see what it did to his day-to-day participation with the people who were around him. We are all grabbed by our God and our gifts are used to bring real life to the Reign of God among us. When we are so moved, the joy of that life is that we each are moved in ways that fit our gifts and therefore the community benefits from each one of us as we our lives become shaped by the One who will not let us go.

Connection: So how has this love moved you off of yourself and into a realm of Glory that is promised to us? I would think that we are daily being moved into glory upon glory and it take place right in the middle of each of our days...no matter what we are doing.

Gracious God, you insist on loving us and moving us and shaping us and making us a people who will become the living image of your Reign. Most often we insist on not going along within the way of your will. We pray that your Spirit will continue to nudge us even as we resist and seek to continue along "my way" no matter how that is for us. Amen.