Dave Brisbin | 2.5.17
Growing up, my church taught me to believe that a savior was coming—someone out there who would change me, save me from myself and my sin. I just had to believe and obey and wait. And that belief ordered the understanding of my faith, dictated day to day choices and attitudes. But reading through Hebrew eyes, Jesus is teaching something quite different…that no one is coming to save us. No one is coming because everyone and everything we’d ever need has always been and is already here. He says the waiting is over, the kingdom is here; he says we won’t find it by looking out there somewhere--it’s within and among. He really couldn’t be any clearer that the salvation, the transforming change we seek is already right here in our midst. One of the problems with what Christianity has become in the West—primarily an intellectual understanding, a theology and a moral code, belief and obedience—is that there is little talk of the process of change. Fundamental change is what Jesus’ message is all about, but if change is seen as an event coming from outside in, we miss the essential participatory process moving the other way: from inside out. When Jesus tells us to repent and believe in the Gospel, that really translates to change direction and trust in the truth of the Father’s love. If our faith remains an intellectual understanding, we will miss the journey, the process of transformative change as we wait to be changed. But…if everything and everyone we need is already here, how to we get from here to there? Repent and believe, change and trust points us to the only tools we have to get from here to there, to kingdom living: awareness and choice. We don’t choose just once to follow Jesus. We choose every moment of our lives, again and again to be present to the Presence that precedes us. The spiritual life is really about developing awareness of Presence in each moment. And with awareness in hand, spiritual discipline is about then choosing where Presence leads: from here to there.
