A Moment Aside --- 18 February 2021
There are those who feel that conversion or “coming to Christ” is a once-and-done thing. If you’ve done it, there is no need to revisit that experience.
The reality of things is different, I believe. Becoming a
Christian in every sense takes time and is rarely done in one moment. (I say “rarely”
because it might just be possible.) The heroes of the Christian faith have had
to take time to work things out once they encountered the Resurrected One.
Paul, for example, encountered the Risen Jesus on his way to
Damascus. Once he came to believe, he actually went off to the desert to work
things out and then he remained there in Syria in order to learn how to live our
his Christian faith. Peter had to have a vision of animals in order to learn
that God has blessed all things and made them “clean” (in a ritual sense.)
Such stories are all over Christian history. I’ll just end
today with the word of Martin Luther on growing in Christ as what might be
called a gradual process:
This life
therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but
healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we
shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it
is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in
glory, but all is being purified. – Martin Luther
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