“I was wrong”

H,

In the highs and lows of our common experience in God, in all our travels and travails, our living in the light or wailing in the dark, it has always been, to my mind, that right was that other country and wrong was the fading past. I was wrong.

It turns out that salvation, grace, redemption are not just the inception class but the thread and theme of this new life. We will be wrong much more than we will be right. We will fall into holes we thought we have buried in the sand. We will go back. We will suffer the ignominy of defeat, over and over again.

If we look at the disciples and their relationship with Jesus, we see one bumble after the other. He was always correcting, teaching, telling off, warning and instructing them to higher purposes. There is no magic potion for the human state. It must fail, finally, and be redeemed. In-between the final transfiguration, are a thousand falls. We will learn to fall perfectly well.

This is not a sad note. It is counter-programming. We are tricked into thinking that this foibles are gone. Some do. We lose the taste for some of our major flaws and that initial fresh air makes us believe we are on the road of glory. We are but glory is the revealing of the true nature of things. Our true nature will not look good for a while.

All of this is not to put the soul down. Let joy be the song we sing in these trying times of body, soul and spirit. We are being made into the being that does not end. We are going to be made of eternal stuff. A little walk to it is not such a heavy thing. This burden is light. This burden is power. This burden is love.