Ordinary, everyday lives of ‘otherlyness’
There are many in the Christian tradition who talk of being ’saved’*. But, I can’t help asking, what do you mean by saved? Saved from what? Save for what? Surely, if ’saved’ is to mean anything it has to at least include, the present, this world and us, as physical bodies, living that out in our actual everyday lives. Many of us are very aware of the need some form of redemption: the world is clearly suffering from the lack of justice and the confusion and corruption of beauty, which we can see that in our personal lives as well as globally. A ’saving’ that only deals with a post-mortem experience is not good enough. Oswald Chambers reflected on a similar thought in the early 1900’s:
“It is not a question of being saved from hell, but of being saved in order to manifest the life of the Son of God in our mortal flesh, and it is the disagreeable things which make us exhibit whether or not we are manifesting His life… .. the thing that ought to make the heart beat is a new way of manifesting the Son of God.”
[from Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest]
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