Friday, December 20, 2024
CAC teacher Jim Finley describes how God knows each of us intimately because we are “hidden with Christ in God”:
When God created you, God did not have to think up who you might be. God … eternally knows who you eternally are and are called to be from before the origins of the universe. As Saint Paul says, “Your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).
Who God the [Creator] eternally contemplates you to be in Christ the Word is who you are before you were ever born…. There was never a point prior to which God did not eternally know you in Christ the Word through whom all things are made. The infinite simplicity of God admits no division. In this poetic meditation on your true self before you were born is a meditation on you in God as God, in no way other or less than all that God is.
Our response to God’s love for us can result in our giving our lives back to God:
In creating you as a person, God the Father [or Mother] wills into being who [God] eternally knows you to be in Christ the Word. God’s … fiat [“let it be”] of creation … brings you into being, giving you a nature…. In your human nature you are a finite creature of God endowed with the capacity to know and to love. Why? So that you might, through your human nature, come to know God by learning to love God and to give yourself back to God, who is the origin, ground, and fulfillment of your life as a person created by God … through Christ the Word.
Finley reflects on how meditation may allow us to experience our oneness with God:
Moments of spontaneous meditative experience can be understood as flash points of awareness as the person we are breaks forth into human consciousness. Suddenly, we realize a oneness with God that we intuitively recognize to be at once God’s identity and our own. In moments of meditative awakening we obscurely sense that who we are and who God is is, in some inscrutable manner, one mystery. Sustained in this awareness, we realize that if we were to try to find ourselves as someone other than God, we would search in vain. If we were to search for God as other than ourselves, our search would be equally futile. For we realize that God is given to us, wholly and completely, in a oneness that is at once all that God is and all that we really are. We are not God. But we are not other than God, either. We as persons are who God eternally knows us to be in [God’s] infinite knowing of [God’s] infinite actuality. And in this paradoxical truth lies the essence of what it means to be a human being destined for eternal oneness with God.
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Dec 20, 2024
The Idol of Comfort: The Power of Contentment
I’ve seen it on posters, mugs, jewelry, magnets, church websites, and countless memes. Celebrities post it on their social media accounts and athletes paint it on their eye black. Steph Curry has it embossed on his basketball shoes, and it is the motto for almost every Christian youth sports league. I’m talking about words of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
It’s easy to see why the phrase is so appealing to achievement-focused Americans. It echoes our culture’s pioneering outlook that says barriers are made to be broken and nothing is impossible. It also identifies Jesus as our secret sauce—the Christian’s added edge when competing in sports, business, or the broader game of life. It is the pop gospel of American Christianity captured in a tweetable sound-bite.
But is that what Paul intended when he wrote the sentence? Remember, Philippians 4:13 wasn’t composed by Paul after he won a football game or when his ministry signed a television contract. He wrote it while awaiting execution in a Roman prison, and it’s only when the verse is read in that context that the apostle’s actual intent becomes clear.
The strength that Paul has received from Christ isn’t the strength of achievement but the strength of contentment. He was given the power of serenity even in the worst circumstances like hunger and poverty. This is the opposite of how many contemporary Christians employ his words. We see contentment as anti–American and celebrate those whose discontent drives them to achieve more both in the world and in ministry. In Philippians, Paul is not speaking about his ability to achieve all things, but rather his God-given power to endure all things. Properly understood, Philippians 4:13 is about learning to accept our losses, not a promise of God’s help to assure our victory.
When we twist this verse to prop up our culture’s false god of achievement, we miss how Paul’s remarkable message actually holds the key to toppling another cultural idol—comfort. We are driven to pursue comfort and safety because we fear pain and insecurity. Self-preservation keeps us from following in the steps of Jesus.
Having obeyed Jesus and experienced the worst the world can do, Paul exposes the lies of the idol of comfort. He reminds us that we can abandon safe, comfortable settings and faithfully step into difficult circumstances because Christ will give us the supernatural power of contentment—the ability to endure all things. The fact that Paul penned these words in a prison awaiting martyrdom only adds to the gravity of this truth.
DAILY SCRIPTURE
Philippians 4:10–13
1 Timothy 6:3–10
WEEKLY PRAYER
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
O Lord, let me not henceforth desire health or life except to spend them for you, with you, and in you. You alone know what is good for me; do therefore what seems best to you. Give to me or take from me; conform my will to yours; and grant that with humble and perfect submission and in holy confidence I may receive the orders of your eternal providence, and may equally adore all that comes to me from you; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
