By David ReayWednesday 28 Mar 2018LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 2 minutes
Read 2 Corinthians 5:17
17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! (NLT)
Texts like this seem rather unreal. Are we really brand-new people? Has the old life truly gone? Are we not so often rather like everyone else but with a bit of Christlike devotion showing through from time to time?
We can argue that Paul is speaking of what it is like in principle. Elsewhere we read he is very aware of the daily struggle to follow Jesus and how often we fail and need restoration. Our challenge is to be in practice who we are in principle.
But there is another dimension to all this. None of us makes a brand-new beginning. We have to own our raw material, the people we are, the background we have, the upbringing we experienced. When we become Christians, or when we resolve to make a fresh start in our existing Christian journey, we don’t go back to square one.
We make our new beginnings not where we used to be or where we wish we could be. We make them where we are and with what we have in hand. Jesus builds on what we have, not what we don’t have.
In one of Patricia St. John’s poems she writes this about Jesus: “He seeks no second site on which to build, but on the old foundation, stone by stone, cementing sad experience with grace, fashions a stronger temple of His own.”
Blessings
David Reay