.. we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from God…

Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don’t squander one bit of this marvellous life God has given us.. Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!

(2Cor 5 & 6, extracts: The Message)

The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It’s our handle on what we can’t see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd. By faith, we see the world called into existence by God’s word, what we see created by what we don’t see….. 

(Heb 11.1-3)

Do you ever find yourself dizzy with words? Driven to distraction by the sense of what seems to be meaningless noise echoing around your head? I love words, I need to articulate my thoughts, but even I can get to the point where I long for some kind of communication which does not include text or speech! The whole of our scripture is about the revelation of the Almighty God to his creation, to his beloved humankind, and much of that revelation is actually by deeds – by the ways in which God deals with people in all their messiness and rebellion. We are encouraged to learn from that recorded history not by memorising the actual words, but by discerning their meaning, the patterns and lessons which they reveal. The glorious exposition of faith-in-action which we find in Hebrews ch 11 is a call to remember, to meditate, to learn from the lives of others – and we can apply that same learning to the lives of those nearer to us in time. I have found so much encouragement from the stories of faith which are shared by more contemporary figures, people like CS Lewis, Elisabeth Elliott, Joni Eareckson Tada, Pete Greig to name but a few.

And yet, over and over I find that until I have wrestled those life lessons into my own words, I have not actually understood them – and as for learning and putting them into practice….well, why do you think this blog is named ‘a forgetful soul’?! On one level, words are meaningless because of themselves, they cannot do anything. And yet on another level, they are powerful because they are the means by which our thinking and understanding is shaped and changed. And so, although I get weary of reading, weary of wrestling with my thoughts to articulate them, weary of chasing first one writer and then another in hopes that their words might somehow communicate to me just what I need to hear – yet still I read, I wrestle, and I investigate. And all the time I am praying that God will take these words and make the truth which they represent real for me – that I will learn to know by experience what the words are trying to portray for me. My constant cry is “What does this look like in real life, in my life today?”

I write today to encourage myself to persevere with words; and to encourage others also as they seek to grow in faith and maturity, in wisdom and love as God leads and directs our lives. The 66 books which we call our bible (which simply means a mini-library of books) are where we start; our lived experience informs much of what we read and must be where we work it out; the lives of others will teach and shape us as we observe God at work in their situations too. And ultimately, it is by the Holy Spirit working within that the truth read becomes the truth lived – we no longer seek to explain faith; we live it. We no longer simply describe the freedom of Christ as it should transform our lives; we exercise and experience it. The bud breaks, and the flower of Christ’s life in us is unfolded day by day, as his power unfurls each glorious petal of our transforming personality.

Merciful and loving Father, hear us today as we thank you for your power in us to transform our lives. We read and learn and ask that you will take the words on our lips and in our minds and make them real in us. May we live by faith in you, trusting in you at every step. May we live expansively, generously, unafraid and great-hearted because you have set us free in Christ. Let our words mean something for eternity; let us embody Christ, the living word of God himself – for your glory and our blessing. Amen.