It's one of my friends favorite ways to describe work, "Making Progress" is what he will say. He is talking about moving forward on a big project or knocking out a number of smaller items in hopes of getting a lot accomplished.
For me, progress means getting further, but it's not always forward! My guess, this is your experience as well. You take two steps forward and one backward.
In my marathon training the schedule calls for long runs on the weekend like 14miles, 15 miles, 9miles. The next set of 3 weekends is 17miles, 18miles and 13miles! Looks like two steps forward and one step back.
In learning to follow Christ we make incremental steps of learning and doing then fall backwards. I have come to believe and support this type of progress as our camp works with students. Incremental progress is normal. We should expect it and continue the process forward as best we can. For this reason, I now use "Following" Christ as a way to describe what I am doing.
For me and many others in my life, we are following Christ. Instead of equating church attendance, service in church, giving a tithe weekly and more as equal to being a Christian. I know am practicing the art of following Christ. I still attend church, give and will serve again soon, it's not what it means to be a Christian for me any longer.
3 comments:
Wow! One of my greatest insights as I "mature" is that the Christian life is more of a process than taking steps ("whew, I'm done with that step, now let's see if I can get to the next one" mentality). Thanks for the perspective!
I connected with your blog through Don Crane, and I am enjoying and learning from the thoughts you share.
You don't even know how much I needed to read this, thank you. I had felt so connected to him and lately I've just felt distant and distracted. I've really been beating myself up over it. But I do see what you mean.. two steps forward, one step back.
I would really love to sit and pick your brain on this subject. I am finding these things out more and more, especially being somewhere that makes church attendance difficult, and morality gray. Thank you for your words.
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