Nonaligned faith and practice in the present
Six years ago on the Saturday of Holy Week, I wrote about what I call The Empty Day.
For many Christians, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter are the key days of that week. For me, as one who is constantly on the boundary between faith and doubt, it is that in-between Saturday which confronts me most vibrantly with the gut reality of Jesus in my life.
Nothing convicts me in my heart more than the contemplation of Jesus as a historical person.
All my decades of wrestling with spiritual paths and theologies are self-indulgence, compared with the blessèdness and horror of that man’s life. Every day’s news is full of the brutality and painful neediness of humankind. That Jesus walked compassionately into the midst of it all is reason enough to follow him—and to be dismayed whenever I fall short of doing so.
…
…