Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Maintain


Tuesday 2/5/2013 5:03 AM
We in the Christian community are encouraged to grow in our faith.  Any sign that our faith is on hold or, heaven forbid, ebbing is met with renewed spiritual fervor in an attempt to jumpstart a new cycle of growth.
Today I read an excerpt from Howard Thurman’s book The Growing Edge in which he reminds me that there is nothing in life that experiences unlimited growth.  Both plants and animals grow for a period of time and then simply maintain the life they have.  Thurman writes, “I am always reminded that the experience which may be mine at a particular moment may be an experience in which things are stopping.  Or it may be an experience in which things are just beginning.  It is important that I know which process is taking place.  An intimate part of growing into life is the development of a sensitiveness, an apprehension of process in its totality, that I may be enabled to know the character of the event with which I am dealing.  Then I will not act in the house of death unnaturally by not accepting it.  All of this is to say that there is inherent in life and brooding over the life of man the creative mind and the spirit of the living God.”
I need to be less concerned about the growth of my faith and concern myself more with knowing God, trusting him to do the necessary brooding over my life to determine which areas to grow and which to kill off.  In a word, maintain.

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