The art of living in faith
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I pulled the quote below from one of my Lutheran theological heroes, Gerhard Forde. There’s a lot of background context, so excuse the shortness of it. But he sums a lot of things up nice n’ tidy.
Faith is an over-used word in our culture. It’s a tired word. So tired, I’m afraid, that it’s lost almost all meaning.
This little blurb breathed new life into the meaning of the word, especially from a theological perspective. It’s interesting to hold up ‘sin’ and ‘faith’ next to each other…
There’s nothing wrong with our created state other than loss of faith. Faith is the state of being grasped and captivated in the Spirit by the proclamation of what God has done in Jesus. The life of faith is the art of living in that light.
Sin is simply the lack of joy in God and the creation. The belief that God is a burden to shake off of our backs and creation is not good enough for us.
We are bound to try to escape up, out, and away from the creation God gave us. We are always on our way somewhere else. Some ideal world where we can be our own god.
Gerhard Forde
’Theology is for Proclamation’
I mean, c’mon now… How good is that?! I’ll quote this humdinger of a line again…
“Sin is simply the lack of joy in God and the creation.”
That preaches, right there. I don’t care who ya are.
With this definition of sin as my mirror, I am totally a sinner. I spend most of my days taking God and this created world (including people, buildings, technology, flora, fauna, medicine, art, food, etc.) entirely for granted. I have better ideas on how things should go and how I should be treated. If God would only just either listen to me or get out of my way.
But there I go again.
Escaping up and out.
Trying to be my own god.
Here’s my prayer for the moment…
God, I’m turning in on myself again. Bring me back down to Earth. Lay me flat on the ground and direct my eyes towards the cloudy summer sky above. Pack my soul full of the joy that can only come from you and turn me outward in love.
Grace + Godspeed,
Jonas