Waking, March 2, 2009

I really like this description of coming to a life with Jesus by N.T. Wright in his book Simply Christian [http://books.google.com/books?id=7fanGwAACAAJ&dq=NT+Wright&source=an&hl=en&ei=2_-sSZPPEpmMsQOs9sTOBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result]. He writes on pp 204-205:
 
What happens when you wake up in the morning?
 
            For some people, waking up is a rude and shocking experience. Off goes the alarm, and they jump in fright, dragged out of a deep sleep to face the cold, cruel light of day.
 
            For others, it’s a quiet, slow process. They can be half-asleep and half-awake, not even sure which is which, until gradually, eventually, without any shock or resentment, they are happy to know that another day has begun.
 
            Most of us know something of both, and a lot in between.
 
            Waking up offers one of the most basic pictures of what can happen when God take s a hand in someone’s life.
 
            There are classic, alarm-clock stories. Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, blinded by a sudden light, stunned an speechless, discovered that the God he had worshipped had revealed himself in the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth. John Wesley found his heart becoming strangely warm, and he never looked back. They and a few others are the famous ones, but there are millions more.
 
            And there are many stories, though they don’t hit the headlines in the same way, of the half-awake and half-asleep variety. Some people take months, years, maybe even decades, during which they aren’t sure whether they’re on the outside of Christian faith looking in, or on the inside looking around to see if it’s real.
 
            As with ordinary waking up, there are many people who are somewhere in between. But the point is that there’s such a thing as being asleep, and there’s such a thing as being awake. And it’s important to tell the difference, and to be sure you’re awake by the time you have to be up and ready for action, whatever that action may be.
 
 
           I love N.T. Wright’s recognition that everyone’s experience of having God abide in their lives is not prescriptive but full of variety. It’s also personal.
 
            I look at my life as a gradual, continual waking-up. When I first woke up to the desire of wanting Jesus to be a part of my life for the rest of my life 30 years ago, in one very real sense, everything suddenly became more real than ever.  I saw more, heard more, felt more. And not a day goes by that my senses are not sharpened even more and my mind awakened even more.
 
            At the same time, that experience was part of a process, a longer experience of being exposed and introduced to God as far back as I could remember. Never was God was an impossibility, a myth or lie.
 
            The thing, as N.T. Wright points out, is that when I woke up as college-age adult, I could tell the difference. I had crossed a line, switched into a new dimension of consciousness and reality within a world I thought I already knew.
 
            The current global economic crisis calls for similar: a wake up to a new reality. May it even be a spiritual one.
 
            
 
 

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