This post comes from a wonderful book by Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith, Devotional Classics. This book is one in a collection of books called Renovare resources. The intent behind developing these resources is that they will revive some of the great Christian thinkers and theologians that have written throughout the journey of the Christian faith.
This devotion comes after a reading of 17th century theologian Francois Fenelon. The thrust of the argument in the excerpt from Christian Perfection is that we find real and true joy in only one thing…loving God. I was struck by the piercingly simple words and understanding he has of being a child of God. At youth group we just did a lesson about being yourself and the person that god created you to be. Using Psalm 139 we talked about the way that God knows us more deeply than we even know ourselves.
Fenelon says that: “everything that we do for him [God] is easy.” When I read that i thought about how hard it is to walk the narrow path and stay true to what God has in store for me. It seems anything but easy. Then again this guy was all about the quietest movement and complete separation from the world. reading further he talks about the freedom and liberation of walking the narrow path of God and the way that then when we choose God over all else we find true joy because we are not concerned or worried about judgment of others, malice, uncertainty of life, our own weakness…and the list goes on.
The trouble comes from us thinking that we are on the narrow path when indeed we have one foot on the path and the other off of it. It is like we have one foot on a canoe and the other on the dock. When we try to push away the strain of the boat and the dock becomes apparent as the gap grows and something has to give. Sometimes we tend to see a life of real faith as a life of depravity and disconnection. Yet in reality it is a life of liberation and connection with the One who created and formed our hearts.
