The Essence of Repentance

Resting in Jesus is not applying a spiritual formula to ourselves as a kind of fix-it. It is the essence of repentance. It is letting our heart tell us where we are in our own story so that Jesus can minister to us out of the Story of his love for us. When, in a given moment, we lay down our false self and the smaller story of whatever performance has sustained us, when we give up everything else but him, we experience the freedom of knowing that he simply loves us where we are. We begin just to be, having our identity anchored in him. We begin to experience our spiritual life as the “easy yoke and light burden” Jesus tells us is his experience.

In Matthew 24, Jesus tells us that in the last days, people will have lost the Sacred Romance altogether. Having no anchor, their faith will grow cold and they will be literally swept away in panic, as all but what cannot be shaken is shaken. Only those of us who are securely anchored in him in our heart will be left standing to share the Sacred Romance with those who are lost.

We have come to the shores of heaven together, to the border of the region where our Christianity begins to move from a focus on doing to one of communion with Christ, our Lover and Lord. The spiritual disciplines of silence, solitude, meditation (heart prayer), fasting, and simplicity practiced by Christ and passed on to us by the traditions of the Desert Fathers bring us through our emptiness and thirst into the presence of God. When we begin to abide in God’s heart, the blades of grass on heaven’s outskirts no longer puncture our feet. Here and there, a fresh and exotic scent reaches us from heaven’s very borders.
 

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