Faith Venture

It is the day of change. We go from spring to summer. To my friends in the Southern Hemisphere, of course, it is the opposite, going from fall to winter.

Seasons change. We must change our disciplines. If longer daylight and warmer temperatures draw us outside more often, do we take our study and prayer outside with us?

Instead of protecting ourselves from the cold, we now must protect ourselves from heat and too much exposure to sun.

In different seasons of our lives, we must prepare our disciplines differently and protect ourselves from new and different spiritual threats.

We live differently for these three months. Let us not forget to bring along our disciplines of study, prayer, meditation, worship, and service.

“It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.” – St. Augustine

Take a trip through the book of Proverbs and see what God thinks of prideful people. And to what happens to them in the end.

Pride is the ancestor of all bad habits and actions.

Pride prevents us from achieving great things; for just as he is about to realize the completeness of his leadership, the prideful man and woman will be brought down in humiliation.

Pride erects a barrier that prevents personal relationships deeper than appearances.

Pride leads us down the road of bad decisions.

To be humble does not mean to be weak.

The humble person filled with God’s spirit, acknowledges their place in the universe. They lead not from arrogance but from wisdom. Wisdom comes from learning from past mistakes. Pride blinds us to our mistakes.

I searched the scriptures for examples. It’s not easy for they are filled with stories of flawed people.

King David’s story reveals a man who would move within the tension of being prideful and being humble. When he was humble and did things for God, he was powerful. When his pride got in the way, he got into trouble.

Look at Peter in the New Testament. He had to endure his personal crises to lose his pride and become a strong leader.

It is not easy to overcome pride. Just as in the 12-step programs, the first step is to stop and recognize our pride. Every day as we develop the spiritual disciplines of study and prayer and meditation we must remind ourselves of where pride has slyly insinuated itself into our lives.

It is only through prayer that we can get past our pride. God help us in our overcoming of pride before we also have a great fall.

“In the beginning, when God created the world… And God said…”

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Nothing came into being without him, and without him nothing came into being. And what came into being with him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

It is instructive and interesting to compare the opening of Genesis and the opening of the Gospel of John. John is actually much more poetic–at least in the English translation.

Because John used the Greek Logos (word) which had deep meaning in Greek philosophy, and because John often calls the opposition “The Jews”, a generation of scholars taught that John was not a Jewish book, but rather a Greek and anti-Semitic book. I have come to realize that they perhaps let their cultural influences capture too much of their thinking.

According to the Hebrew creation account, when God created, he said. And what was the very beginning of creation? Staring at nothingness, God began by separating light from dark (not day and night, that comes later). And what does John use as his metaphor for the entire Gospel–the separation of light and dark.

Our response needs to be to look for the light. And let the light of God shine into the dark places of our lives so that we may live in the light and not the darkness.

And what does that mean in daily life? I’d go look at Paul, and his lists such as fruit of the spirit, or the last five chapters of Romans. Paul makes this all practical.

And then we go screwing it up, because we let darkness block out the light. We need to live oriented toward the light–like a sunflower.

I saw the light, I saw the light

No more darkness, no more night

Now I’m so happy, no sorrow in sight

Praise the Lord, I saw the light