Skip to main content

Holy

           He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, (II Timothy 1:9)

          This passage hit on just a right day. There may be more than one day that would have been just the right day for it, but today is one. Someone from one of my writing groups asked what would make a character a strong woman, and six ideas popped into my head. So now, what makes a life a holy life?

          According to one source, holiness means apartness, separateness, or sacredness. For our life to be holy, it must be separated, different from the lives people around us live. For some, the idea is to go off somewhere away from everyone else to live according to a set of rules. Oh, that sounds so tempting sometimes.

          Another source suggests that it is specifically separation from defilement. Again, this produces a long list of rules about what you can, or must, or cannot, or must not do. In this case, our lives don’t have to be different from everyone else’s, just different from the “bad guys” – whoever we define as bad guys.

          The problem with these is that they are negative definitions. The focus seems to be on what we’re to separate from. There’s usefulness to that, but that’s the difference between Eve’s argument against temptation and Jesus’. Eve’s focus was on the fruit of the tree, and how she was to be separate from it. Jesus’s focus was on God.

          According to the Merriam Webster, holy means “exalted or worthy of complete devotion as one perfect in goodness and righteousness.” Now there’s something to strive toward. No, we can never achieve “perfect in goodness and righteousness” and the goal shouldn’t be that others consider us worthy of devotion. But what if our goal were simply to live in a way that is exalted and worthy?

          Still another source says that in the New Testament, “holy” carries with it a sense of heaviness or weight of glory. This doesn’t mean we throw our weight around, but that we live our lives in a way that has weight, that makes an impact on the world in a positive, God-ward direction. It’s a life in which what we do matters. And this is what God meant for us from before the beginning of time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more