Believe in the vitality and creativity of God
By The Very Rev Ian D Barcroft, St Mary’s Church, Hamilton
On Sunday we celebrated two children being baptised.
At that moment, they were the two newest Christians in the world!
They have become, like all Christians, a“child of glory”.
Have you noticed older men and women who are friends, disciples of Jesus, and how they have openness, spontaneity, and trust; an undimmed eye for the beauty of life around them despite their trials, sorrows and anguish?
Enlivened by the Spirit, their spirit is much younger than their years.
To become a child of glory is to believe in the vitality and creativity of God always.
Remember how Jesus taught that children were a model for leadership? To be child-like, to be a child of glory, is not to be childish but is to embody and communicate both the vulnerability and the joy; the reaching out for life that it may bear the fruit that is God’s Spirit.
Where the authority of the child of glory is denied within ourselves, within our churches, within our wider community there will be spiritual sickness.
There can be no play, no imaginings and no chance to learn new things; there is only a relentless adult pomposity and conceit, certitude and prejudice.
The authority of the child of glory is the authority of the future. Unless we open ourselves up; loosen our clenched grip to what we can become, rather than holding onto what we are we will never know the joy of discipleship.