Keep Walking

Are you the same person today as yesterday?

Such a question conveys a common understanding, or a misunderstanding, that any answer refers to the self, that in some psychological context, this self, is either better or worse. If all that is relatable, in other words all that we see and experience, the life outside of us, this question places limits upon us. The result of asking whether we are better or worse suggests we remain standing where we are, where we have always been.

But life is not simply outside of us nor a list of experiences memory stores to be retrieved for conviviality or best forgotten. There is another life, a life inside whereupon we once saw things as they were and now see them differently. Some may call this a life of meaning or spirituality, which has as its end self-satisfaction. As long as self is the goal, the point is sorely missed. There must come a moment in life when this improvement leads to a question. What is its source? Of which, if thought is taken to its proper end, the only answer is God.

This is movement. This is the realization that all that we are was created by Him, that we belong to Him, that the purpose of living is to do His will, what was thwarted in the garden and made perfect in the Son. How should we ever do this but to first accept Him, and then, follow Him. To follow has many consequences of which before we were unaware but now being made aware we desire to discover what it is He would have us do. Thus the Christian’s journey begins, this movement, this becoming, not a better self but a more Christlike being.

Movement is never easy because it means leaving behind what may have before been dear to us, what before our desire thought was good for us, even coveted, that road to self-satisfaction. Movement may mean to do the uncomfortable thing, the thing we believe we are not good at doing. It could mean going places self-satisfaction would not allow before. Movement is the hard work of the Christian life, most uncomfortable and lacking human logic. But we must remember when we follow Christ, when its gravity finally settles within, there is the revelation God is already where He is taking us. This has a generative power to act.

George MacDonald writes, “To follow Him is to be learning of Him, to think His thoughts, to use His judgments, to see things as He saw them, to feel things as He felt them, to hearted, souled, minded, as He was—that also we may be of the same mind as the Father.”

Following means to breathe the same air as Him, to be in the same room as Him.

“Then He said to them all, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.’” (Luke 9:23-24, NKJV).