Faith in Motion
I may be accused of being lazy, but this piece from the daily notes “Living Light” struck me as something I felt I would like to pass on to you. Iot’s by Paul Harcourt and published by Nationwide Christian Trust, Mulberry House, Chelmsford Rd, High Ongar, CMS5 9NL from whom copies are available.
Steve Piggott
Go to an art gallery and you’ll normally find wonderful pieces from many centuries past. The pieces on display remind us that it isn’t always the latest thing that is the greatest. Yet the gallery also shows that there has been a process of development over the years.. Artists have built on what has gone before, but have often taken things in surprising or creative new directions. As Winston Churchill said, “ Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
In some respects, that is also true of the faith of God’s people. The more gloriouse the past, greater is the temptation for preservation to become fossilisatisation/ Paul the Apostle clearly undertsood how glorious God’s history with the Jewsih people was, but until he encountered Jesus that tradition was holding them back.
The “good thing” that we cling onto can sometimes prevent us from responding to God when He is doing a “new thing”. I suppose that the ultimate point of the past is what reveals about God in the present, because He alone never changes “Methods are many, princples are few methods may change, but principles never do”.
The traditions we value are,not a hammock into which we can comfortably relax, but are meant to be a springboard into the future that God has for us.