WAVERING

Tip toeing through the aisles of need and want, it is so easy to trip and fall. One steps along, lively at time, thinking the pace is perfect. But where does it lead? To heaven or somewhere else?

There are so many times when possessions and time are consumed by things having no spiritual merit. It isn’t always a negative aspect. For we are both mortal and soul.

However it is difficult to find harmony. To render under God what is God’s and under the monarchs of mammon their due. Somewhere in between we reach for whatever is ours to claim.

In the process it seems at times that so much of the biblical teaching I hear is about cleaving more to the Savior. It is wise form of advice. Yet is the Lord without knowledge of our complete needs.

It also occurred to me that so often the teaching I have heard is from individuals who aren’t exactly monks. And that makes me wonder if they actually listen to their own advice.

Where is this posting headed? Perhaps it is as wavering as the title. But the essence I suppose is a reflection on how we truly do need to do as Paul said and work out our salvation with fear and trembling. It means never reaching a point where we have arrived.

Mature saints in the faith can backslide. There is the ever present temptation to slowly lose one’s grasp on remembering one’s need Jesus to be the center of life.

On the other hand, distance and getting consumed by each day’s demands can totally blot out any vision of heaven or the Lord. So that avenue of experience can be equally spiritually anorexic to the welfare or one’s soul.

For me this is a simple offering of my essence that the confession of my own wavering might perhaps encourage another who has also stumbled or wavered. It is to say simple, “don’t give up just because one is human.”

I think in some ways extremism is the response to the fantasy of thinking one can truly obtain complete surrender in this life. That if we give the Lord all that we are it will allow us to cast off every liability of the flesh on a permanent basis.

However, I’ve come to accept that the path, which really brings any form of survival is one that embraces we aren’t possessors of wings or halos in this life. We are simply after all human. And with each step, we remind ourselves of the side roads that lie ahead. The journey of faith thus is one of discovery and joy when we keep learning. Including realizing that no matter how much we know there is still more to learn. Some accept this, some lie about it. In the end, the Lord waits for those who keep trusting.