We’ve made a mistake in how we understand the Christian life. Kate Bowler hints at this in the title of her recent book: Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved. We’ve fallen in love with some lies.
This blog is dedicated to exploring one of the ways that we’ve misperceived the nature of the Christian life. We’ve lost any sense of our earthly sojourn as long, hard slog.
As Christian puts it in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress:
“To go back is nothing but death; to go forward is fear of death, and life everlasting beyond it. I will yet go forward.”
Let’s be honest with ourselves. The Bible never promises anything other than struggle, hardship, and a continual need to die to self in order to be live to Christ.
There is joy of course.
But it is the joy that comes from the shared experience of journeying together through highs and lows and in a heavenward direction. The liturgical calendar reinforces for us that this is the nature of our spiritual journey.
So. Let’s begin to explore the nature of the Christian life together and see if we can deepen and widen how we understand the life of faith.
Jeff Gissing 