A Good Recollection

You know how sometimes you read stuff you wrote a long time ago and it really speaks to you? Well, this does...

December 13, 2007

In the past week of my life, I have become a person who I was not a week ago
A part of me that seemed long dead has been reawakened
As I have come to understand how my faith can truly integrate itself into all parts of life and creation
I have seen how God’s redemptive work is moving throughout all of creation
And it is is beautiful
To even think about
Restoration
Life
Beauty
For so long I thought that so many things about Christianity didn’t leave room for caring about the environment, or fair labor or fair trade practices
Or activism even
Let’s take it there
I did
Now I see so clearly
That my faith is meant to influence my views on all of these things
And I am not meant to merely discard them, abandoning them all for a “focus on God”
Instead my focus upon God influences the way that I live my life in all of these other realms
The freedom of this realization is amazing
In college there was such a disconnect for me, between the sort of socialist liberal agenda
And my evangelical background
Now I see something beautiful
Not the two interwoven, but rather, another way
Where a path is carved out for the Christian who can care about creation…because God cares about creation
For the Christian who can love the poor, because God first loved her and gave his life for her
For the Christian who can stop living merely to gain wealth, pleasure, and possessions
And who can now really, truly, live
The disconnect was misperceived
Perhaps because of a lack of information
I now see that there are Christians who are modeling this
And I am excited to be a part of a movement that integrates faith into all areas of life, instead of “chooses faith” and blindly ignores all other aspects of life
My life is not compartmentalized
And I am free to do something meaningful without feeling guilty that I am trying to earn my salvation
Wow
This diatribe has been a bit exhausting
But I love it