Learning to Live Like it's 2010

This morning I sat down to journal and I wrote the date at the top of the entry. Only I wrote January 14, 2009. That's what I've been doing for a year: writing 2009. It's only been 2010 for fourteen days, ergo I'm having to un-learn "2009" and having to learn "2010."

I laughed as I corrected my mistake--and it made me think about and pray about how many of my ingrained habits are out of line with reality.

When we come to Jesus, we enter into His Kingdom, a new family, we are introduced into a new culture in the "land of the Trinity" as Augustine calls it.

In this place, there are things that intuitively strike us as refreshing, life-giving. This is as it should be: we are image-bearers, simply returning to things that we were made to inhabit.

But also in this place there are things that feel alien, foreign, odd, and awkward. There are parts of the culture of this land that will feel anything but natural. It will, at first, feel forced and even painful.

This, too, is as we should expect: we are fallen creatures, and we have hundreds of habits that are built around life here in the land of the ruins. There is a learning curve in growing up into this new place.

But what most of us do, especially us Americans, is that we bump up against something that doesn't quite feel right or sit well with us and instead of adjusting to it, learning it, working through that process of learning to live in a new way, we reject the new thing.

And we attempt to develop our own hybrid/customized model of the spiritual life: part God's kingdom, part my way, which is really a mixture of our personal preferences and thousands of influences that we foolishly think we operate independently of like media, genetics, and our mood on that particular day.

And of course our culture celebrates that: "way to think for yourself!" There are few more widespread delusions than this piece of cultural mythology. Most of what we call "thinking for ourselves" is a complete and utter lie, based on how white/westerners would prefer to see ourselves rather than the realities at work that shape and form us, for good and for ill.

But more critically, the problem is this: our natural habits and preferences are very often out of line with what is reality. It is most comfortable and familiar and feels most right for me to continue to write "2009" at the top of my journal. Left to itself, it would continue to be that way

But of course, me continuing to write that does not create a separate, parallel reality. It's not 2009, no matter how much I write it at the top of my journal. I must learn new habits, to align myself with the reality that is created external to me.

And so it is with us in our spiritual journey. There is a kingdom and a place that is not ours create, it is only ours to explore and enjoy--and even that we do with borrowed breath, eyes, ears, minds and imaginations. But we cannot invent it. We can only discover it.

And whatever we discover that is other than what we would prefer or desire, we must either submit to and learn to enter in, or we must reject the thing in its' entirety.

We have not been invited to create our own tailored spiritual experience. We either participate in God's kingdom as his children or we live as orphans. There is no third way.

For sure there is mystery here--and nuance and process and prayer and things that we must wrestle with. But we must start with the understanding that we enter into this place as foreigners and learn to become sons and daughters only over time. And the only way we get there is by aligning our newly-given self with a new reality.