tatooz1

"John's Gospel should be a reminder...that true change begins with faith, the kind of faith that leads to love, the kind of love that builds a community, protects that community's present, that guarantees its future even as and probably because it challenges, counters, and resists the hostilities of the world around it. This is the kind of community that witnesses to the truth that in Jesus Christ God has broken into the world... This is the kind of faith that must be sheltered and nurtured. This is the kind of faith that witnesses to the lordship of Christ in the world and all the countercultural possibilities that such a witness implies" -Brian Blount, "Then the Whisper Put on Flesh"I just finished reading a book by Carole Maso called "The Art Lover." One of the characters in her book is a forensic art historian who is in the process of restoring Leonardo's Last Supper. Maso describes David the painstaking work of removing layer upon layer of grime from the painting, using a variety of precise tools. Move too slowly with your tools, and the solvent will eat away at the original artwork; too quickly and you risk chipping the work off the very wall it was painted on. Everything depends on the weight with which you apply the instrument and the timing. But if you have the patience and the temerity to complete the time-consuming work, then you might just have the pleasure and the reward of seeing the "bright rose colour" of what is beneath, the very essence of the work. What would that look life in one's life? How might one take the practice of art restoration and apply it to one's spiritual life? I imagine myself peeling layers of grime from my relationship with God, carefully extracting those things that keep me from myself, from a more full relationship with Christ and with my faith. What would that look like? It cannot be easy. Just giving up something temporarily for lent is difficult enough. But to think about it a bit.... what would one peel away in order to get back to the essence of one's faith? Things that might be peeled away: -television -dependence on the internet -an hour of sleep becoming an hour of prayer What would you give up? What is worth sacrificing for a better relationship with God? For a better knowledge of yourself? For whatever you value at your core? 265476
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