Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Ever wonder why we can’t get out of this rut?

Maybe it’s a question you’ve asked as you went to the same job, in the same place, after leaving the same house and the same family so often it feels like life has no more zest. Why do I feel stuck, wedged, and jammed into a slot that’s getting more and more uncomfortable?

Feeling stuck is often an ironic result of lives constructed to help us feel the opposite. We crave freedom and fulfillment, often as a product of our deepest fears around security, abandonment, and acceptance. These fears can often be at the heart of the big choices we make surrounding work, home, and family. And as we construct lifestyles to assuage these feelings we build frameworks, habits, and traditions that form ruts.

This Sunday, we meet a disciple who’s in a rut. His name is Thomas, as in doubting Thomas – the one who refuses to believe the news the Jesus has risen unless he can see and touch Christ’s wounds. What keeps Thomas back seems to be his presuppositions about who God is and how God is supposed to act. Thomas is unwilling to abandon his framework for understanding faith and God. The result, ironically, is that the love he so desperately craves, is unrecognizable and unembraced. He is forever branded a doubter, and despite his subsequent recanting and acceptance, he becomes known for his wavering faith.

Thomas was apparentely focused on a conception of God that was undoubtedly safer and more comforting – and which would have only led to his ultimate insecurity and suffering had he continued to reject the One who so desperately pursued him. As Paul Tillich has said, faith is the courage to accept acceptance.

So what’s holding us back? How is our priority on self-preservation actually depriving us of the self-fulfillment we more deeply desire? Why are we allowing our mediocrity to trump our possibility? And what do we need to take a chance on today?

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Recommended Reading
Hypatia – Charles Kingsley
Seasons of Faith and Conscience – Bill Wylie Kellermann
Drive- Daniel Pink

This post originally appeared on http://therevchrisyaw.blogspot.com/ on April 12, 2012 and is reprinted with permission.