“Into the Light”

How do I even begin to summarize two and a half years of growth? Great Books has been one of the biggest blessings of my life. I have been thinking this week about writing this, and I became overwhelmed as I contemplated all I have been able to learn about the world, people’s views of beauty, ideas about faith, and how I have been deeply convicted about my religious beliefs. The retreat aided me in summarizing all I learned and being able to apply it to my personal life through the individual studies we completed. 

Throughout my journey to completing the Great Books program, I was challenged with the concept of being a blind follower. Acts 8:26-40 is about the Ethiopian who was reading about Isaiah. However, he did not understand the scriptures he was reading. When I read the passage the question, “How often do we seek guidance when we do not understand something?” As I look back on my own walk, I am convicted because for so long I was a spoon-fed Christian. I listened to my teachers and agreed with what they said because they knew more than me, but I never questioned if they were right. In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer challenged me to be a proactive Christian who does not merely show up on Sunday and be the face of another “Christian.” He writes, “Grace is costly because it calls for us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ” (45). Being obedient is not an easy process, but it is rewarding far beyond what we will understand while on earth. Following Christ requires that we obey his command to love our neighbors, but to love him first. I believe that sometimes as Christians we get caught up in loving our neighbors and caring for them that we forget to care for our own spiritual needs. While on the retreat, I realized how dry my vessel had become because I had been focusing on being the guide for others. However, if you think about it, I could not guide anyone because I had neglected to let God guide me closer to him. Being a Christian requires that we confess our faults, and the biggest fault in my walk has been neglecting to cultivate my relationship with my Father. 

By neglecting to grow my relationship with my Father, I have become like the eldest son that Nouwen writes about in The Return of the Prodigal Son. I have been present where God is, but I became caught in the works I was doing, rather than in the blessings that he desires to share with his beloved daughter. Nevertheless, God still desires and beacons for me to celebrate in his house. Regardless of what I have done or will ever do, I can be confident in the fact that he will love me no matter what. However, as Bonhoeffer illustrates in The Cost of Discipleship, that does not mean I can live my life however I want to and still expect to be forgiven. Instead, it means God will love me as a child who will not always obey correctly, but that I should try to live as closely to Christ’s example as I can and to ask for forgiveness when I fail. I want to live a life of costly grace, but I know that requires me to be diligent in learning what God would have me to do with my life. It also means I have to study his word to know his commands and the laws he has put in place to protect me from the cruel world that we live in. 

Before being converted at a summer camp when I was seventeen, I did not fully understand who God could be to me. However, on the final night, the pastor charged every student there to return home and confess or fix whatever they had been avoiding. I was deeply convicted because I had been harboring feelings of bitterness, resentment, and hate towards someone, but also feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness in my own heart. But, I could feel God holding his hands out to me as if to say I could let it all go, and I would always be safe in his house. My life was transformed that night. Today, I can say I understand what it means to be loved unconditionally by my Father. In “I, Like the Thief,” Tolstoy writes, “His former wish to get as far as possible from his home has changed into a wish to be as near as possible to it.” My focus is no longer set on the temporal things, but the eternal promises of God. I am in the process of viewing the world from an eternal perspective because that is how Christ viewed everyone. All people are souls who deserve to know who God the Father is and that he loves each person because he created them. His only desire is that we would choose him as Christ chose them while hanging on the cross. I am obligated to look at everyone as a soul and not merely as another person just passing by. They are a soul passing by that may not be bound for Heaven because they have not received the good news of unconditional love and grace for the ones who will profess Christ as their savior and God as their father. Lewis says in “Weight of Glory” that “There are no ordinary people” because all people are made in God’s image and are bound for an eternal life either in Hell or in Heaven. 

We are called to be ambassadors who plant seeds in the lives of people around us. We are to show them that light does exist in the dark world around us, but that God is beaconing for them to return home. They need to turn into the light and let him guide them through the trials of life. He is the only person who can fulfill our lives and who can bring rest to the weary. So we need to set our lives where they face into the light.