Change and Transformation

There is a subtle difference between change and transformation.  Change usually involves getting rid of something and exchanging it for something else.  If you change your address, you leave your old address and move into your new one.  If you change your shirt, you take one off and put another one on.  Transformation takes what you have and reshapes it into something different.

Change can happen to us; transformation happens in us.

At Community Life Church, we have been making a lot of changes.  The changes have not been made rashly or without much prayer and planning.  The changes are being made to do what we can to make our little group of believers more effective instruments for the work of the Holy Spirit in our community.  And through all these changes, we hope that we can be transformed personally, to be personally more in tune with the working of God’s Spirit.

Richard Rohr has some comments on transformation:  “But mere change might or might not be accompanied by authentic inner transformation. If change does not include personal transformation, we do not actually grow, we just grudgingly adjust.”

Throughout our changes, we each need to be open to personal transformation.  If we don’t, we might wind up doing little more than “grudgingly adjust”.

Our egos often get in the way of personal transformation through change. In self importance, we can quickly look on ourselves as victims in change.  Or, if we are pushing for the change, we can become bullies as victors in change.  Whenever change is going on, we all need a hefty dose of grace: to accept change gracefully and not be victims, to initiate change gracefully and not be victors.

Richard Rohr notes: “Change is one thing the ego hates more than anything. The ego fights, avoids, and denies the necessity or advantage of any real transformation, which is why true spiritual growth is so rare and the Gospel is so hard to hear. The ego prefers the status quo—even when it is killing us.”

Something to think about.

Being Ordinary is Special

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Friar, helps us see that each of us, very ordinary people, living our very ordinary lives, each one is very special to God.  Here are some of his quotes to think about.

"It’s a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness and ordinariness. Then you are free with nothing to live up to, nothing to prove, and nothing to protect. Such freedom is my best description of Christian maturity, because once you know that your “I” is great and one with God, you can ironically be quite content with a small and ordinary “I.” No grandstanding is necessary. Any question of your own importance or dignity has already been resolved once and for all and forever."

 "One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway… We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking… The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality."

Wise Words from Abraham Lincoln

These wise words from one of America's great presidents would be good advice for any church at any time in any century.

 

 

"There is enough bad in the best of us and good in the worst of us that it behooves all of us to speak no ill about any of us." - Abraham Lincoln.