Posted by Alan Hirsch on Facebook:

“The war is at an end – even though here and there troops are still shooting, because they have not heard anything yet about the capitulation. The game is won, even though the player can still play a few further moves. Actually he is already mated. The clock has run down, even though the pendulum still swings a few times this way and that. It is in this interim space that we are living: the old is past, behold it has all become new. The Easter message tells us that our enemies, sin, the curse and death, are beaten. Ultimately they can no longer start mischief. They still behave as though the game were not decided, the battle not fought; we must still reckon with them, but fundamentally we must cease to fear them any more. If you have heard the Easter message, you can no longer run around with a tragic face and lead the humourless existence of a man who has no hope. One thing still holds, and only this one thing is really serious, that Jesus is the Victor. A seriousness that would look back past this, like Lot’s wife, is not Christian seriousness. It may be burning behind – and truly it is burning – but we have to look, not at it, but at the other fact, that we are invited and summoned to take seriously the victory of God’s glory in this man Jesus and to be joyful in Him. Then we may live in thankfulness and not in fear.”

– Karl Barth

“The believer’s cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension, the bearing of which is demanded. The believer’s cross is, like that of Jesus, the price of social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of a path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not, like Luther’s cross, an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to come.” John Howard Yoder in The Politics of Jesus

This is cool. A quote from Bill Johnson on  Facebook: Ignorance asks for understanding; unbelief asks for proof.

Sometimes I read things I wrote with such passion years ago –and cringe.

I’m not the same person I was then, or even a week ago. I am changing.

Being aware that written words flung into space have an indefinite life-span, I am wary of attaching my name to any opinion that ends with a click. Jesus did mention that someday words spoken in secret would be made public. The recent Wiki leaks poignantly remind us that words typed, spoken or signed may all be piling up in some cosmic file somewhere where there are no passwords, avatars or pen names.

So I’m wondering, given the weight of this responsibility, what I should write. Or not write. I’ve uttered some pretty stupid stuff in my time. Every once in a while, though, I’ve passed on a useful tidbit to another sojourner on the road -but only  because it’s a patch of road I’ve already been down -sometimes several times. Some trips worked out well and others…

Sometimes I am merrily dancing down this road when I catch the gleeful possibility of a new rabbit trail in my peripheral vision (where most creative stuff happens.) Sometimes I come out ahead. Sometimes I emerge, scratched, bug-bitten and humbled ten miles back from where I was distracted. Then I get to experience the same lesson all over again.

Sometimes I am merrily dancing down the center of the road when I am attracted by a pretty new idea blossoming on a bush on the verge. After a time, when the thorns from that bush clutch at my mental, spiritual, or intellectual  freedom I pull away so hard that I land in the soggy boot-snatching mud in the ditch on the other side of the road.

It may take a while to find the center again.

Then again, I have noticed a tendency in people who constantly worry about being in the center to make the road much narrower than God does; it’s hard to dance on a tightrope. I intend to make use of the whole road and dance, plod, saunter and holy roll (if I feel so led) into my God-given destiny. Tiny “c” conservative is not a compliment if it means burying your one talent in the ground for fear of making a bad investment, nor will making a grand ta-dah dismount from the balance beam of life, after decades of clinging to it with all fours, impress the judge all that much.

I have not arrived, and as the Bible says, “It does not yet appear what we shall be.” I have not arrived, but I would like to leave some bright ribbon trail markers from time to time, if it will help followers conserve shoe leather and take them farther than I have gone.

So, I am subject to change, by the grace Jesus Christ pours on me, because sometimes I’m wrong -and I’m learning to admit it- and he gives me more chances to get it right. I am subject to change because God has created me to be something I haven’t fully realized yet, although he does realize it and probably is not nearly as discouraged by my flubs as I am since he is not limited by the constraints of living on a timeline. He knows the end from the beginning. I am subject to change, because thing one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind I press on to the mark of the high calling of God, and the more I get to know him, the more I love him, and the more I want to change.

It’s a process.