They want me to write differently. Certainly I could, but I must not. God has chosen me from thousands and given me, of all people, this talent. It is to him that I must give account. How then would I stand there before Almighty God, if I followed others and not Him?
Anton Bruckner, Austrian composer (1824-1896)
2 comments:
It is so hard to shift perspective. Our entire short lives, until some particular nexus event, all our lives we hone our survival skill. We are a people "under the sun," born scared by sin -- insecure, taught that rugged, hardened independence was the path of survival yet, inwardly, terrified of loneliness. We are a people craving excellence and ease, acclaim and affirmation. We desperately desire to love and be loved; I think desiring real love, only, we have little more than the shades in a world of walking dead from which to learn what love looks like.
The same is true of honesty and beauty and wisdom… where does the young person in the west go to learn the truth of these traits?
Until Christ Jesus, by His Holy Spirit, brings our inner being alive and awakens our mind to what to want, where to look, and from Whom to desire approval and affirmation – until then, all else has trained us, and is constantly propagandizing us, to believe all those things come by effort on our part and from the "good will" of the human mass where it touches our lives. And that morality and ethics only matter when trying to impress or win some observer to our support.
The surprising wonder, and heavenly kindness, is that we ever get life right.
Bill
Depth is not something pursued in many Christian circles these days though it is talked about as if it were and held up as a desirable goal. There is much to do and pausing to think long and deep, pray long and deep, and wonder long and deep are not real possibilities for many Christians. It is not modeled much and therefore not aspired to much. However these things have a way of righting themselves in the timetables of eternity and I hope to see a day, not too far off, when the importance of living faith with depth and integrity matters more than a thousand programs, important as those programs might be.
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