By Word Made Flesh International Executive Director, Clint Baldwin
How might we, at least in some small way, “be the change we wish to see” this week?
I’m part of a Sunday morning group called “Current Conversations, Ancient Faith.”
Yesterday, after engaging in a “Common Prayer” liturgical reading, James 2 was our core discussion focus.
It’s a great gift to be with our group & to emphasize continuing to seek that belief reasonably aligns with lived practice.
There’s a whole lot of room for what practice & impact should look like, but at some time & way evidence of stated belief needs to manifest in lived life. Ultimately, being cannot be severed from doing.
Importantly, it fundamentally is not ours to judge the journey of others (of course, at appropriate times, we can & should be in conversation with others about their journeying & ask questions about process). Yet, it very much is our responsibility to assess our own journeying & ask ourselves the hard questions of what we actually believe &, this being so, how we can make sure that we are seeking for actions/practices to align with such belief.
Thankfully, all of this assessing exists within immense space & grace. This assessing is simply about living into a lifelong journey of care & compassion for ourselves & others.
It is meant to be very encouraging that what we believe matters & what we do matters. At its best, what we believe should be indicative of what we do & what we do should be suggestive of what we believe. There should be reasonable correlation.
That we don’t always believe accordingly or act accordingly isn’t primarily the concern.
It becomes concerning when there is misalignment coupled with an unwillingness to seek change.
That we are generally about continuing to seek alignment is key.
Seeking alignment is a lifelong learning process. As we grow in our faith we arrive at new understandings of what healthy outworking of belief should look like. Thus, take heart that everyone is always in the process of arriving rather than having arrived. Some have become more adept at the alignment process, but no one is ever finished while still walking this earth.
We are all in this learning process together.
May God give us grace for the journey!
Clint Baldwin
Executive Director of Word Made Flesh
clint.baldwin@wordmadeflesh.com
