Pilgrim Soldier

As always these days it’s been awhile since I last posted anything. It seems to be more a case of trying to keep the blog alive at the moment as life has been so busy because of training! Anyway, just a thought that came from the last book that I was reading, Pete Grieg’s A Vision and a Vow.

In his book Grieg writes:

Lately I’ve been longing more than anything else to belong to a community that is purely and simply deeply kind.

Kindness seems to be an underrated commodity, even in the church, and to be honest I’ve been unkind a lot in my own life and have suffered been on the receiving end of a great deal of unkindness within some of the congregations I’ve been a part of. So the idea of a church community that places a high value on kindness is appealing to say the least!

Imagine for a moment belonging to a place/community where everyone is kind to each other, not just those who they have things in common with but those they don’t. That’s what we should be aiming for if we believe in the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, kindness…! What’s more in that sort of community the aim would be to constantly strive for more of the same, not out of a spiritual one-up-manship but out of a genuine love for each other!

Grieg goes on to say that in the context of our striving to be more evangelistic:

Ironically, it may well be when we stop “doing” evangelism and start loving our neighbours for their company rather than their scalps, that the Church will grow in breadth and depth.

I wouldn’t invite people to a church where people are unkind to each other but I would certainly invite people to a place where kindness is part of the make-up!

I’ve mentioned before that in my Google Reader I get a daily quote/thought from a sight called inward/outward. The quote that is provided is not always great and sometimes I disagree fundamentally with them. However, this morning’s is a Thomas Merton quote, and whilst I’m not in agreement with it, it did make me think. The part I want to share with you is this:

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying God. It ‘consents’ so to speak, to God’s creative love. … This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do.

Merton goes on to say that every being gives glory to God by being the thing that He created them to be. In my opinion this is definitely a thought that shows Merton’s Zen influences, but I do think he has a point.

The problem though comes with us humans. Do we reflect God’s glory simply by being human? I would say that we don’t because in actual fact the majority of humanity are not ‘consenting’ to God’s creative love. We are not actually being who God created us to be and we’re certainly not obeying God.

As I said in my last post I’m currently enjoying reading Graham Tomlin’s The Provocative Church. There are numerous passages highlighted already, with quite a few scribbles in the margins, but here is one that I feel is pertinent to this post:

[loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength] means a reorientation of our lives towards learning to love God and learning to love other people, rather than the sef-indulgent and self-oriented lives we’re used to.

This is the message that I’m trying to get across in our morning meetings at the corps at the moment. We are working through the various Fruit of the Spirit and I’m trying to explain how these are the real signs of spiritual maturity, rather than what we do in church. For me the real test of an individuals holiness is the manifestation of these fruit. In my mind it doesn’t matter how much an individual expresses their love for God; it doesn’t matter how much they do in church. What matters is whether their lives are increasingly loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle and self-controlled.

This is how we, as humans, give the glory back to God. As we grow in the fruit of the Spirit, as we allow the Spirit to work within us and convict us of sin and shape us into holy people, then we become more like the people God intended us to be. So Merton has a really good point, but we have to allow the Holy Spirit to shape us in order to really reflect God’s glory.