|
Today’s Scripture ~ I John 3.14 (NLT)
If we love our Christian brothers and sisters, it proves that we have passed from death to life.
But a person who has no love is still dead.
Wisdom Story
A young African convert visited a school and watched some girls sewing. He noticed that the thread always followed the needle, and he saw in that a weighty spiritual truth. Later that evening, he prayed, “O Lord, You are the needle, and I am the thread!”
Contemplative Musings
The entire Christian life is that of a practical positioning. Practical in that a theoretical or doctrinal claim to be in Christ does not empower us to become like Christ or prepare us to be available for Christ to evidence through us.
Then, we can pose a question, “Can a person truly abide in Christ and not be overflowing with the Fruit of the Spirit?” We need to be careful in coming to a conclusion on this matter. For often the Spirit has to do much healing work within us before there is an overflow of Fruitfulness. What begins, however, as a rivulet, can become a river.
As soon as a person is truly positioned in Christ, she or he is a spiritual being, a spiritual Christian, even if one so immature in Christ as to lack almost all evidence of being in Christ. But at that moment a new tendency begins. That tendency is the expressing of the animating Life within. Life begins expressing in and through the person. We have been under the guidance of bios, fleshly life, but now, we are under the blessing of zoe, spiritual life. You and I become an instrument in the hand of this Christ Life. We receive the music in the Mind of the Divine.
In Christ means you and I are placed within a supernatural order, a supernatural alignment with the Living Christ. The resulting tendency will be evidenced quickly in a fresh life orientation and guiding principle. The life orientation is in Christ, from Christ, and back to Christ. The guiding principle is the Living Christ.
I return to a passage from yesterday. Colossians 3.3 has, “For you died to this life [bios], and your real life [zoe] is hidden with Christ in God (NLT). This does not mean that you lose the essential life of the body and mind. You do not become brain and body dead. Rather, you die to the control of bios as the determination of your inner and outer orientation. This death is a reorientation of the very faculties of body and mind that estranged you from zoe. The body and mind are, in theological terms, consecrated to the higher Life, to Christ. This begins the on-going process of sanctification, which is the process, initiated and animated by Grace, of having the total self actually and fully animated by the Life of Christ. This is a process, at least for most of us, not completed in this life.
This repositioning in Christ is an actual spiritual event, not a mere metaphor, and it entails having the whole self taken into the Spirit of Christ by the Holy Spirit. By means of this new in Christ position, we each are taken into God ~ as St. Paul has it: “hidden with Christ in God.” The same reading can be “hidden in Christ in God.”
Therefore, as a spiritual Christian, I am actually in Christ, really in God. Certainly, this is a mystical teaching, as many of the New Testament teachings are, but mystical only means most spiritually actual. To say being in Christ cannot be understood, is a mystery, does not limit the reality of its truth. Indeed, the truths mystical are those most descriptive of our standing as Christians. The more mystical is a teaching, the farther from body and mind, and the closer to Pure Spirit, Who is Truth.
We can experience this being in Christ, in God, in many ways. One way is engagement with the world. As the Spirit of Christ progressively influences our whole self, we begin to experience the Divine in the natural order more, and this includes experience of the Christ in the other. This other can be a person or another creature. The simplicity of some nonhuman creatures might make it easier for some persons to experience the Divine in and through them more easily than in persons.
However, serious disciples of this Living Christ have for centuries taught us to go within. They have affirmed that the within is essential, even more essential than the experience of Christ without. Indeed, the general person is so attached to the outer world and its relationships that he or she will never experience Christ deeply without a practice of inner solitude. The very inundation of external stimuli on the body and brain in our society is enough to block all receptivity to in Christ.
However, your own solitude, which is an inner path to realizing personally and intimately your being in Christ alone, paradoxically is a most unselfish act. For it is in this aloneness, which is an intense and conscious alertness to God, that you come most in contact with the richness and life of being in Christ. This richness and life is where your aloneness is discovered to be, paradoxically, most one with others. This means that unless I enter into my aloneness in Christ, in God, I will fail to meet others there. Indeed, I will not likely respect the need of another for spiritual solitude, and I will not try to provide the context to honor this human need of inner solitude. Rather, I will think the man or woman who is contemplative un-Christian at worst and deluded at best, and certainly inefficient and impractical. As Thomas Merton writes, in No Man Is An Island, “Indeed, the soul that does not seek to dress itself in possessions and to revel in purchased or stolen satisfactions will often be left completely alone by other men. The true solitary does not have to run away from others: they cease to notice him, because he does not share their love for an illusion.”
Therefore, I must get to know my own being hidden in Christ in God. I cannot do that simply by external works and doctrine. I must go within. I must honor the need of the other for that same inner solitude. I can do this knowing that he or she will be most in communion with me, most love me, by being in most communion with his or her being in Christ, in God. We are, indeed, most intimate in Christ, in God, which is to say, “We are most loving.” And to be in Christ means our lives alone and together pass through Christ, as the thread passes through the needle.
Suggested Exercise
Complete the following sentence. I know I am living in Christ because….
Brian is available to respond to requests pertaining to seeking a Spiritual Director, his speaking, doing classes, workshops, or retreats for churches or other spiritual groups.
For submission of replies, see below:
*Brian K. Wilcox lives with his wife, Rocio, and their two dogs, St. Francis and Bandit Ty, in Clearwater and Punta Gorda, Florida. He is a United Methodist pastor and vowed member of Greenbough House of Prayer, a contemplative Christian community in Georgia. His passion is living a contemplative life and inspiring others to experience a deeper relationship with Christ through contemplative prayer and living.
|
