SPARK OF RECOGNITION
It's 11:30 am, and I'm wrapping up an apologetics lesson I'm teaching to a crew of Harding Academy sophomores. We'd had a good discussion, and they're accustomed to confronting challenging content in my class that makes them think outside the box. I take a moment to explain Paul's central message that as long as the Law has power over a person's future, they will never truly learn to love God. Centuries before Paul, Jeremiah proclaimed:
33“But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34“They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
Jeremiah was prophesying concerning the Holy Spirit and a coming time when teaching the external requirements of the Law would no longer be necessary. This was consummated in Christ. With his triumph over death, the only remaining reason to draw near to God is love - the very thing he intended from the beginning. I proceed to share my personal aspirations with them. I tell them I wish to one day be transformed by this love, to listen to my highest thought and learn to follow its lead. My singular desire is that it reshape me and draw out my deepest nature from the inside out, until his essence is a part of my daily experience.
I note many blank stares amongst the class, but my words have captured the imagination of at least one, who inquires whether such a transformation is really possible. Though her phrasing belies a note of skepticism, I can see in her eyes a spark of spiritual recognition. When I nod, she beams. Her smile lingers as she collects her things and walks up the aisle and out the door . . .
All too often people approach transformation from the outside in or are content to consign it to the outside, period, as if a veneer could somehow compensate for the decay inside. I fear the internal journey I'm describing will take much longer to bear fruit, but I believe it's the better way. I will build my spiritual house and work on it, as I am able, until God's nature manifests as my own.