The active life

Happy if with my latest breath

I may but gasp his name. Charles Wesley

 

Read Hebrew 4:9—13

Tonight I am met with contrasting messages or images and I need to see where the word of the Lord to me lies. On the one hand I’m called toward rest. Sabbath rest. Which I take to include freedom from haste, from strenuous effort. It is conclusion. The other image is of striving and labour, of making every effort. If the Sabbath is destination then the striving is the road to the destination. It looks as though my Christian life is to be full of business and energy. Yet I thought I was saved entirely by Jesus, not by myself, that he is my high priest gone before me on my behalf, and that even now I am to be at rest because I trust him. I thought I was freed from frenetic self-effort. What do I miss here? I see one answer: his word to me is not at rest. His word is dynamic, searching, active. It must be. It’s God speaking! So I’m not some passive lump of wood washed over a weir.[1] I’m certainly saved by Christ. And in that I’m actually energised. I’m brought to life by him. He speaks. So I’m not passive. I’m very, very active.

 

You have brought me alive by your grace. You, Lord, have awakened me. By your Spirit you have energised me. You speak. You really speak! You have declared that my life is to bear the good works you have prepared for me, and to pulse with the gifts and the fruits of the Spirit. Turn all my energy to your purpose while I have life, and prepare me to be rejoicing on the great Sabbath that is the end goal.

 

[1] The image is Karl Barth’s in his teaching on conversion as awakening.