What Lasts
Theme of the Week: Conduct You Can Count On
Eugene Peterson
Monday, November 4, 2002
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What Lasts
Theme of the Week: Conduct You Can Count On
Monday, November 4
Key Bible Verses: People like that … can't make up their minds. They waver back and forth in everything they do (James 1:7–8). Bonus Reading:Daniel 6:1–11
The reason my childhood was one enthusiasm after another was that I hadn't yet found an organizing center for my life and a goal that would demand my all and my best.
The Christian faith is the discovery of that center in the God who sticks with us, the righteous God. Christian discipleship is a decision to walk in his ways, steadily and firmly, and then finding that the way integrates all our interests, passions, and gifts, our human needs and our eternal aspirations. It is the way of life we were created for. There are endless challenges in it to keep us on the growing edge of faith; there is always the God who sticks with us to make it possible for us to persevere.
In Charles Williams's drama Grab and Grace, there is a dialogue between Grace and a man who is dabbling in religion, trying out different experiences, "into yoga one week, Buddhism the next, spiritualism the next." Grace mentions the Holy Spirit. Grab says, "The Holy Spirit? Good. We will ask him to come while I am in the mood, which passes so quickly and then all is so dull."
And Grace answers: "Sir, purposes last."
—Eugene Peterson in A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
My Response: The purpose my enthusiasms are set by is …
Thought to Apply: We need to learn to set our course by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship. —Omar Bradley (U.S. Army general, 20th century)
Adapted from A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (InterVarsity, 1980, 2000) by permission.
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.
November/December 2002,Vol. 5,No. 6
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