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"All too often in our early
formation, our goodness and potential were
downplayed; our sin and weakness were stressed in
excess. The result is a world full of people who
move through life without a felt sense of their
basic goodness." (Macrina
Wiederkehr)
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You Good Thing
We've
all heard the miraculous stories of coaches who
saw potential in someone 'ordinary' and persisted
with them until they achieved glory. The old fairy
tales had similar plots, at times, such as
Cinderella's potential to be more than a
kitchen-hand and the Ugly Duckling's potential to
become a stunning swan.
We
all tend to see potential in the people
around us, but not usually their good
potential. More often, we see their potential
to deceive us, to hurt us, to lie to us, or to
take advantage of us. We live with barrow-loads of
suspicion and truckloads of caution. And the news
stories we hear every day remind us to trust
noone.
We
distrust our neighbors, doubt our children, and
grow dissatisfied with our spouse. It's all
negative.
Similarly,
many of us have grown up with so much personal
criticism and censure that all we can see is our
own potential to fail or to disappoint. An
enormous amount of pain in our lives derives from
the negative assessments we believe about
ourselves. "We're incompetent, unreliable, weak,
and worthless." Sometimes those messages have
emanated even from
pulpits.
Some
people suggest that the gospel (the good news) is
that Christ is able to take all the trash and turn
it to treasure. He's able to convert our
depravity into glory, and our sinfulness into
saintliness. No doubt He can. But such an approach
to our humanity is inherently
negative.
While
some believers favor an analogy whereby Christ
turns our coal into diamonds, an equally valid
analogy might be the gold mine, whereby Christ
reveals and refines the good that has laid
increasingly buried in our
lives.
Much
good lies within us all, all the
time.
The
journey towards godliness takes time, not just
because our sinful nature remains defiantly
prominent but also because our godly nature ("in
His image") remains persistently buried. It helps
very little to beat ourselves over sin, if we fail
to also affirm Christ in us, the hope of
glory.
His
image was stamped on us at birth, not rebirth. The
rebirth provides impetus to call ourselves by the
names the Father has always used of us - sons and
daughters, beloved ones, saints. We feel
uncomfortable - perhaps even ashamed - to embrace
such titles when our view of humanity remains
stuck in our
shortcomings.
As
we lead others, and seek to grow ourselves, we
might find enormous help and health as we seek to
uncover (with real anticipation and hope) the
basic goodness within ourselves and all those
around us. Christ looked beyond the immoral
lifestyle of a Samaritan woman, beyond the
racketeering of Zaccheus, beyond the leprous skin
of the outcast, and kindled something of God
within each
one.
What
gifts, good things, and gold do you see (and draw
out) in
others?
In
HOPE
-
David | 
