The Imitation of Christ
Karen and I have decided to read "The Imitation of Christ" by Thomas à Kempis in the mornings. If you're not familiar with the book, the chapters are only about a page each, so it's manageable in a 30 minute commute. This should serve the purpose of allowing us to get our minds going on something spiritual rather than early morning talk radio or Air1 (God bless them for what they do, but I'm tired of hearing the same 5 songs all the time!). So here are the main things that stuck out to me this morning after reading chapter 1:
- "If you want to understand Christ's words and relish them fully, you must strive to conform your entire life to His."
- "Esoteric words neither make us holy nor righteous; only a virtuous life makes us beloved of God. I would rather experience repentance in my soul than know how to define it."
- "It is vanity to give thought only to this present life and not to think of the one that is to come."
- "It is vanity to wish for a long life and to care little about leading a good life."
I think these statements stand alone and need no attempted explanation from me. I would, however, like to mention that the line "I would rather experience repentance in my soul than know how to define it" rocks my world.
So feel free to give me your thoughts on these 4 statements!
posted by Chad B at 1:22 PM
1 Comments:
YAY for being in the blogging world! Quite excited.
Thoughts on Imitation...
#1: and yet, to be more like Christ, we need the work of the Spirit. So ultimately, the Spirit shows us how to be more like Christ, and in turn, we can understand intellectually, spiritually, and experientially the words of Christ. and all this - the working of the Spirit - is pretty mysterious to me.
#2: i agree whole heartedly. however, i think it's not wrong to strive to define those things we experience, to understand with our minds and words what salvation (love/Truth/etc) is. In fact, I think in a certain sense we should strive for it, not for holiness as Kempis points out, but for effective ministry and sharing the Gospel, etc etc.
#3: i definitely don't think enough about the world to come. but actually, this very morning, the lyrics to "we are one tonight" were rocking in my head, and i just thought, "Wow God... there are a lot of awesome things to look forward to in Heaven..." like being ONE with other Christians, getting to enjoy one another and meet Him face to face... and not have the weekends and fun times ever cease or come to an end... crazy cool.
#4: makes me think of a quote, which i will attempt to put here, though it won't be exact, by missionary Jim Elliot: "He is no fool who loses what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."
all that to say... vanity to hold on to this life for a long time. better to lead a good life (i.e. by gaining Christ, who is Goodness itself) even if your life is shortened. (Which in his case, it was.)
8:43 AM
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