Renewal

As a Lector at my church it is my greatest privilege to read the Word of God to my fellow parishioners. I get to share with them the messages that God sent to us thru men inspired of him. My turn is up tonite and I couldn't be more excited to read words written by St. Paul.

The Pauline writings are a full prescription for our lives following Jesus. For the earliest Christians, St. Paul's writings gave them a guidebook of behavior and while he wrote many letters to those fledgling churches, his message was "simple".

Live as Christ told us to, as close to him as possible. Achieving perfection...as if!

This can only be achieved thru prayer and a throwing away of what we have learned in our own societies.

Timeless writings by the great St. Paul. Like this, which I will be proclaiming at around 5:15pm EST tonite:

Brothers and sisters:
I declare and testify in the Lord
that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do,
in the futility of their minds;
that is not how you learned Christ,
assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him,
as truth is in Jesus,
that you should put away the old self of your former way of life,
corrupted through deceitful desires,
and be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
and put on the new self,
created in God's way in righteousness and holiness of truth.

-letter of st. paul to the ephesians 4:17-24

Indeed. "...renewed in the spirit of your minds..." What an achievement it would be if this was easy, if we could be in that spirit 24/7.

Which is what God wants for us. To do this brings us closer to God.

And what a challenge it is, in these times and likely in the times when St. Paul wrote his letter. 

Throw off our old selves, renew our spirits in God thru Jesus Christ. 

It is, in my mind, what being Christian is all about. The daily work to keep ourselves of the world and not in the world. A challenge that surfaces with every sunrise.