My life consists of 90% cardboard at the moment. Moving is ever and always a hassle, and after throwing knick-knack after endless knick-knack into cardboard cubes, at some point, I just sort of lose it. They’re multiplying, I swear, and I can’t take another one, and so I throw up my hands and sit down at the computer to send little digital men to fight off hordes of evil or watch another cat video. Just something else for a while.
I’m limited. Now granted, this is a sort of pathetic example of it. Had the clock lit a fire under me, I’m sure I could pack another box. But at some point, I really would run out of steam regardless of how much fire was licking at my toes. Sometimes, though, I feel like we have this understanding that being a Christian makes us infinite, or at least capable of tapping into the infinite, and that capability absolves us from the need to change or put much work into changing or being changed. I recall a conversation with a coworker years ago where he explained that we don’t need to work to become holy because the Holy Spirit will always give us power to live righteously. And yet we keep screwing up.
My studies lately have taken me through the history of evangelicalism, and it’s interesting to see how revivalism, Keswick spirituality, dispensationalism, and other pieces of our past have brought us to this place where we can hold on to the idea that once we are converted, we have all that we need or will be given it in the moment. That’s … kind of true, but it’s much like George Eldon Ladd’s idea of the end times: already, but not yet. Heaven is already, but not yet here; likewise conversion has transformed us already, but not yet completely. We’re still limited.
So in this meantime of limitedness, I have to accept my frailty, my fallen-ness, my limitations. God’s a pretty patient fellow, I hear, and he knows we’re dust. He knows we’re already, but not yet, and he promised not to zap us into holiness, but to be with us as we grow. Not that that patience absolves me from working to be holy any more than having (or not) the ability to tap into the infinite power of the Holy Spirit at every moment or whim. We are limited, but he is stretching us.
And now back to my all-moving all-the-time station. I can only write so much blog. I’m limited.