Finding Our Way

I am planning my travel to Lake Junaluska for a few days of spiritual retreat. I am aware that Interstate 40 is shut down between Knoxville, Tennessee and Junaluska due to significant rock slide damage and needed repairs. So I am in the process of consulting maps and travel alternatives for my journey.
As I go about this planning, I am aware of how this shift is much like how we plan our faith journeys and our life as a people of God, the Church. So much in our world and church life seems to be shifting. People who watch the movement of religious life in culture seem to be telling us that the institutional church is going through a time of transition…what has been is clear but what lies ahead is murky as best.
In the murky water of the present and future, I am convinced of this: We have been satisfied as people of God to confine Christian Faith to a set of beliefs. Ask someone, “Are you a Christian?” See what kind of answer you get. I bet they tell you “what” they believe.

While what we believe is important, belief by itself does not make Christian faith.
Faith has become a matter of what a person believes or doesn’t believe. And there we have missed what Jesus is all about. The bottom line is what we do based on what we believe.
It is time we shift our focus to putting our faith into action.
John Wesley stressed “responsible grace.” He was concerned with how our experience of God’s love and care gets translated into love and care for others. For Methodist folks, faith is best understood as a “Way of Life”.
If there is a “map” for being a Christian it is found in how we live out God’s love for us in Jesus Christ with folks we live among and meet day by day….grace able to respond to the life around us.
It’s worth pondering. Blessings on the journey!