Walking on Water; Walking by Spirit

Peter's attempt to walk on the water struck me today as a great metaphor for our own attempt to walk by the Spirit.

Peter was able to do the miraculous simply by trusting and obeying Jesus' call to walk on the water. Peter was able to walk on the water not due to his own power, but due to God's supporting Peter as he crossed the sea. Peter's only role was expressing his faith (notice here too, how faith required an action as described by James). Unfortunately, of course we know that Peter only could maintain his walk for so long, and isn't it the same with us as we walk in the Spirit?

Nevertheless, the elements are striking and important. We can be partakers of the divine life, living out Christ in us, simply by trusting God to enable us to obey His commands. God calls us to love one another; but we all know that we don't have it in ourselves to really love each other as Christ loved us. To do so, we have to put our faith in "Christ in us" (Gal. 2:19-20) to accomplish what he asks.

Then we have to step out onto the water.

Coincidence

This question was posed to me twice today by unrelated sources: What is the Gospel?

It was asked once at Bible study, and the answer was given that 'it's that Christ paid for our sins.'

In another place, it was answered similarly, but in many, many more layers (scroll down one post to see 'What is the Gospel'?), and also in the process claimed there is a Gospel of the Cross and Gospel of the Kingdom.

For what it's worth, my current answer to the question is that the Gospel is that God takes care of everything. Yes, literally, everything.

As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight.

(Ps. 16.:3).


The preceding quote is a tribute to my family and friends in Lincoln, Nebraska, my former hometown. And that goes for ye North Carolina friends, too.

I've moved to Reno. My hope is that God shows me how to live the Gospel here, in the dusty, bright, stark town where I was born.

Here are two poems several of you helped me write and edit, which have been published here:

Entropy Warrior

The second law of thermodynamics states that life gets worse and worse and then we die.

I pummel the black-skinned back of the treadmill
with the pounding paces of my feet,
running away
from the flab and fat
that clings and jiggles and dimples and rolls,
etching into my skin clean lines
of muscle and tendon and bone,
like a monk flaying himself
for drinking too much beer.

When I can’t take it anymore,
I hit the red button ‘stop,’
red digits reading five miles.
I’ve fought the fight.
I’ve run the race.
I’ve beat back entropy one more day.
But having pumped only 450 calories
of heat into the cooling body of the universe,
I wonder at the legend of the Lord Jesus Christ
who once ran on this very treadmill
so hard that he broke it.

---

Late Night Agnostic

Are you awake,
aching to fill your heart
with the perfect tv show?

Are you so hungry
you eat all the cookies
to see if God is in the chocolate chips?

Do you pray
to the Internet,
each ‘click’ a little plea
for just a pittance of distraction?

Does your only relief from the pain
come when your vigil fails
and you fall asleep?

This is a wonderful and moving story about how God used an artist's painting to bring him to Christ.

On judging other Christians

Will I judge another Christian for his particular church practices, or politics, or habits, or personality quirks, or theological quirks when he stands before God, holy, righteous, justified, loved and accepted in Christ? Will I judge her whom God has judged not? Will I criticize them whom God has given his own Son and blood to establish as perfect? Will I tear at that which Christ has called his own body, the Church?

Today was one of those days where I couldn't quite remember what the Gospel was, and this sermon, The Rest Quotient, reminded me.