Skip to main content

Philippians 3. 12-14

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, though I have assurance of salvation through the sanctification of the Spirit of God. We live in a time-bound world. We obtain nothing, nor is perfection a thing to be grasped. We live, and life is a process. Change is, in fact, proof of life.

But I press on to make it my own. What is it? Knowing Him and the power of his resurrection, becoming like him in sufferings and death, that by whatever means (because life is a process) I may attain the resurrection from the dead (because death in Christ is also life in Him).

I make this my own because Christ bothered to make me His own. He went to a lot of trouble for me, too. This is not about evening the score. What other response can you give to the Hound of Heaven than hot-blooded pursuit?

Brothers and sisters, I haven't made it yet. Because life is a process, of course, and because my failures can be counted just as well as my successes. But one thing I do: failures and successes both, I forget. They're in the past, and don't do me much good anymore - being past. I forget these things because I'm no longer responsible for them, though I may live with their consequences. I am responsible for what I do now. With this in mind, I put them behind me where they belong. And I strain forward to what lies ahead.

I press on. Which is the same as pressing into. Press forward, into the Spirit of God who lives within and without, who paves the forward way with a Will. There is a prize ahead, and it is my high calling. I press on.

Comments

  1. Besides loving anything that anyone ever writes if they mention Hound of Heaven, thank you for this post. I am always inspired by your insight. Forgetting my successes?? What a concept. Not that there are too many of those, anyway. So, do you get to publish your own manifesto someday?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

window in the sub

Dear Nathaniel, I am microwaving pie that Mom bought up in Oak Glen this week on her way home from the orthodontist. As I put it in the microwave, I was full of sadness that I was not in Oak Glen with her. Why did I not go? I was working. I want to see the trees turn. I want to wander slowly through autumnal gift shops. Under the water, you cannot sense the approach of the seasons. Even here it is difficult because, after all, it's California. But I can still sense it. After three seasons in Illinois and one in Scotland, it must be with me for good. Or at least for a while. Because I am all abuzz with eagerness for fall and winter, for turkeys and dried leaves and Santa. I should start cooking again this fall. Fall foods are my favorite. Baked squash dripping with melted butter and brown sugar, pumpkin soup... this year, if I have enough money, I will put together a holiday dinner for my friends. And we will drink Scandinavian mulled wine, which is the most wonderful thing I have e...

Again in Gilead

I just finished reading this for the second time last week, thanks to the forever book group of Grace. It was equally as lovely the second time around, and while reading it, I wrote down a dozen more quotes from the incomparable Ames, who is both too beautiful a man to be real and too beautiful a man not to be real. (I'm grateful and amazed to know a few like him.) "It has been my experience that guilt can burst through the smallest breach and cover the landscape, and abide in it in pools and danknesses, just as native as water." (p.82) I have found this to be remarkably true. I see it in myself, and in many others as well. "I believe there are visions that come to us only in memory, in retrospect." (p.91) This seems to be about the only way I experience visions, but because memory is a rickety thing, I tend not to trust them much. Which makes me a poor prophet. "I know, too, that my own experience of the church has been, in many senses, shelte...
So I started filing my taxes. I know, they're due in three days. Then I find that I owe. More particularly, I owe more money than is presently sitting in my checking account (or checking and savings combined - I know, a sad state). This means that I'm not paying with TurboTax online. I'm going ghetto and mailing a check, crossing my fingers that it won't get deposited until after Thursday. Sad, sad state. Let's hear it for that raise.