A great time of Prayer Retreat today for the Team at the Bield, in Perthshire. Three reflections to share:1. For the pastor, there is a paradox in dealing with people. On the one hand people carry problems and pathologies. Their problems haunt and pathologies taunt.
But it is important to see people in the light of the cross and resurrection. That renewed in Christ and by the Holy Spirit, people renewed can flourish and all into the image of God in increasing beauty and splendour.
It is so easy for professionals, used to working with and helping people, to become cynical and tired in the way we see them. They can become problems to be managed and pathologies to be dealt with. But ultimately the best we can do is to bring people to the Cross of Christ, at a point that leads them through to Resurrection life.
We need to help people, in their barrenness, recognise the power of the Cross; to lead them into a remoulding and reforming to become those who flourish to the glory of God.
all that we see around us in the present age has a good purpose; but that purpose is regrowth, metamorphosis and flourishing and development into that which we do not yet see. As the place of God's rule grows within us, so too our ability to see temporality, transience and contingency in everything that is in the present.
3. Fulfilment lies in grasping the paradox of self-denial.
The greatest help we can be to one another is to encourage the search towards deeper obedience to God's rule; and to confirm the truth of the Scripture in what God is saying.
Yet disobedience is not the primary problem. The greatest danger to ourselves is self-hate and the pathology of guilt. This we must die to, in order to find life abundant.
Whenever we lose this sense of paradox, there we lose something of the truth that is the way of Christ.
