In my 3 Minute Retreat reading today, based on Isaiah 49.6 ("I will make you a light to the nations...") I read this comment: "Each of is called to be a light to the nations. The light is generated when we are true to our vocations in life. And when each of us acknowledges and develops the talents that are part and parcel of our vocation, the light we bear brings salvation (restoration) to the world. We become co-creators with God in the work of salvation. How do we do this? Through the action of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is God's life at work in and through us. The more we open ourselves to the movement of the Holy Spirit, the brighter God's light of salvation shines."
"Spirit of God, move through me.
Help me to use my gifts in cooperation with God's plan of salvation."
I like the idea that when St Paul said, "Christ in you, the hope of glory", he was meaning the hope of glory for others. May we be faithful in whatever place and state God has called us.
4 comments:
...and the more we submit to the King, the more we make room for the Holy Spirit in our lives;His light is 'shed abroad' in us. Help me Lord to be ready to be set on a hill!
Managed to snatch a couple of pages of a book by Watchman Nee today. He was talking about the transfiguration and how when Peter wanted to make accommodation for the Law and the Prophets, (Moses and Elijah), God cut across him and said even they are now subject to my Son.
I agree that vocation is not a popular concept.The idea of "changing your mind three or four times and not knowing it in the first place" is high fashion, as young people with no experience change things they hardly understand. But it is neither productive or impressive. It loses all respect and trust and Christians must stand firm. I cannot see that we are "co-creators of Salvation". There is only one Saviour, Jesus Christ. I think this may be a distortion of "co-heirs" in the NT? The Bible is clear that this world is going to pot, as we see around us and ONLY Christ can redeem it, through the Cross.
I think the writer, who I'm sure would agree with you, Alison, that salvation is only through the sacrifice of Christ. I suspect he (or she) was thinking about our role of co-workers with God - "What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labour. For we are God's fellow workers" - and our spreading the fragrance of Christ in the world -"we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing". In that sense we play a part in God's plan to bring salvation to the world.
I grew up in the era of JB Phillips' translation of the New Testament. I like his version of 1 Corinthians 13, for example. Verse 4: " This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience—it looks for a way of being constructive." Blessings.
This is something I read a while back and seems to link in with what is being said
"In response to the question of how both to nurture "self" and to die to it, Dame Joanna Jamieson, Benedictine nun and former Abbess of Stanbrook Abbey, began by citing the early Christian writers, and the notion of the capax Dei, the space for God that exists within each one of us.
"God is not just with us," she says, "he is actually dwelling within us." The tragedy for many of us today is not so much selfishness as a chronic lack of self-esteem, she says, adding: "We are taught that we must love God, and love our neighbour, but we are not taught how to love ourselves. Most people can't begin to imagine how much God loves them."
Dame Joanna turns to the image of God as the potter to illustrate her belief that we are never alone in our attempts to change and grow, saying: "Clay is a lumpy, messy, difficult substance, but once God, the potter, has thrown it on to the wheel of life, he never takes his hands off it until it has been transformed." So working on oneself, on one's inner space, far from being selfish, is actually a service to the wider
world, she says."
and this, from George Mackay Brown
""We are all one, saint and sinner, and all that we ever say, or think, or do, however seemingly unremarkable, may set the whole web of creation trembling, and affect the living, and the dead, and the unborn. It is an awesome thought, that we should not let burden us overmuch. It manifests itself in a religious image of great simplicity and beauty: the cornstalk rising into sun and wind from the buried seed, the offered bread and the hallowed bread, and all humanity sitting down at last to share a common meal"
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