It was the first day of spring. Who could resist getting out to feel the sunshine?! So I did a sunny circumvention of Scout’s faces…
And sat a while in the warmth reading and ruminating on what it means to grow in grace…
And I had a happy tromp around the mountain…
…and back home again.
Meanwhile next door a new owner has taken up residence and is working to establish dominion over decrepit outbuildings, rambling thorns and a jumble of hodge-podge. First comes the demolition, then the clearing and beautifying, as the old way of life on that property gives way to the new…
Perhaps this is not so unlike what it means to grow in grace. A new Owner has taken up residence and is making all things new—out with old decrepit life patterns that serve no purpose, in with the beauty of His holiness… It’s all part of a process that the new Master superintends, graciously.
–LS
And a fresh bit of wording from The Message New Testament:
There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears. (Phil.1:6)
“Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing?
Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you? Don’t these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God.” (from Galatians 3)