| Today we move into a new section called "A new lifestyle" in Moltmann's book "The Source of Life." Parts of it eventually will sound a bit like Walter Brueggemann's previous words on sabbath. God's Spirit which makes us live does not merely free the soul from its miscarried love. It also liberates the body from its tensions and poisons. The new spirituality comprehends the whole of life, not just the religious sides that used to be called 'the life of faith' or 'prayer life'. The whole of life as it is lived is seized by God's vital power and is lived 'before God', because it lives 'out of God'. What we call prayer in a one-sided way includes rejoicing and complaint before God, and lays before God the life we live and suffer. Faith isn't something special, cut off from everything else; it is the trust in life which finds utterance in all the ways in which we express life. This being so, we can also see this new spirituality as a new lifestyle, a facon de vivre. This is where we are always to be going as we call ourselves followers of Jesus. We are people in the midst of a lifestyle. This is a full of life experience that makes up all that we are. There is to be no compartmentalizing. We are as whole as God is whole. From the very small things in life that seem to pass by and mean nothing we are called into the fullness of the moment or the place or the time. It is there - in the midst of things - that God's breath of life is seen among us. If we cannot become caught up in the work of the Spirit of God even as we plod through the many sides of this day, how is it that we can claim to be caught up in certain times and places. Do wee need to limit God's touch to a few places and times? Are we unable to exercise the brilliance of God's Reign right where we are now? Maybe that is why it is so easy to limit our way of following Jesus to those few moments and places that "look" religious or "sound" like something other?! Connection: Think of this hymn as you enter this day; Holy, Holy, Holy. Now what does that change among us? Come. O Spirit of Life and awaken us to experience the wideness of God's Reign so that we will be swept up into its glory and in the midst of the ordinary we will take on the wonder of your holy Reign. Amen. |
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