Three Cheers for Doggedness!
In response to yesterday's post--which made the simple point that, for all our awesome, sophisticated thinking about this hopefully-fresh and helpful version of faith, we do have to actually DO the faith we're discussing--among each of the great comments, I was especially struck by Trish Ryan's.
A mixture of dogged pursuit of faith while all the time keeping in mind the WHY of what we're doing... That seems like a pretty powerful prescription for what we're hoping for on this blog.
This is one area where my new age past has served me well. Through my various seasons of spiritual furniture moving, mediating, and spouting affirmations, I got used to the idea that faith is something you do--that there's a participatory component to it that isn't dependent on how I'm feeling in any given moment.
This helped me when I started following Jesus. Some mornings, the Bible seemed alive with exciting possibilities God put there just for me, and prayer felt like I'd found the hotline to heaven. But then there were the other days--when the Bible was the strangest, most depressing collection of stories I'd ever seen, and talking to God seemed only slightly less ludicrous than conversing with my dog.
But I'd made a decision to pursue this path--so I kept on keeping on. And the results have been pretty great. The stage 4 life, for me at least, involves some practices that look like Stage 2. The difference is that I know WHY I'm doing these things--it's to connect with the living God, rather than just to get my "This is what good Christians do" stamp.