I read both these quotes on the same day and was struck by them. Is God trying to get through? I am a task completer, want closure, need to have attained the goal. But as life goes on, I learn how impossible that is in the total picture – the ebb and flow keeps ebbing and flowing even when I want to get done and get off. The trees I trimmed last year, branches piled high by the street, need trimmed again this year. But this time I cannot reach the branches covering my garden, I will need a ladder.
Martin Luther found the same thing: “This life, therefore, is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness; not health but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it. The process is not finished but it is going on. This is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”
The modern profit of spiritual formation, Dallas Willard has found the same. “Without the gentle through rigorous process of inner transformation, initiated and sustained by the graceful presence of God in our world and in our soul, the change of personality and life clearly announced and spelled out in the Bible, and explained and illustrated throughout Christian history is impossible (Renovation of the Heart, 79).”
Take a deep breath, was that all one sentence? Hold on for the run-on sentence, where was the editor for this one? Or is that the point? The run-on of the sentence is illustrating the process, its keeps going and going when we think we should be done. Maybe I need to stop wanting to be done with this or that phase of spiritual growth and start resting in and enjoying the process. When God says he is working all things for our good (Romans 8:28), maybe the good is not always a destination, as I think of – a good place to be - but rather the good of the process; who he is making me to be. It is a good journey, a good process, a good path for me, even when I do not reach the good destination I thought I was headed toward.
