Hi friends,
Dallas Willard, writing in The Divine Conspiracy, makes these remarks:
In his book The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley remarks, “Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul" (95).
About a page later he contrasts this with Jesus:
Jesus, by contrast, brings us into a world without fear. In his world, astonishingly, there is nothing evil we must do in order to thrive. He lived, and invites us to live, in an undying world where it is safe to do and be good. He was understood by his first friends to have “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10). Thus our posture of confident reliance upon him in all we do allows us to make our life undying, of eternal worth, integrated into the eternal vistas and movements of the Spirit (96).
If all we can ‘see’ is the physical, then there is a curtain over our lives. Cut off from the eternal and the ultimate, all our efforts to establish purpose, meaning, and goodness are idiosyncratic and relative.
But joined by faith to Jesus, with our eyes opened to see reality from God’s point of view, we experience that we are beloved, and that every ordinary moment is an invitation to gratitude, service, curiosity, and love.
How does following Jesus change the inescapable ordinariness of life for you?