Well, the foundations are down for the poustinia. As you can see from the photo they are not a thing of great beauty, but they are level and resting on stone. They will support the beams on which the poustinia will stand, and they will be invisible and unnoticed until either the shed is taken down or the floor starts to wobble.
As I have been putting them in I have been musing on the whole topic of foundations.
The question I have been mulling is rather the anonymity and forgotten-ness of foundations. When was the last time you looked at the ones in your house for example? How does this aspect of foundation enlarge our understanding of enacted faith in Christ as the foundation of life? At first glance it seems rather to undermine rather than boulster discipleship.
However there are three rather important areas for contemplation, I think.
The first is that we do need to grow as disciples. In 1 Corinthians 3 (where Paul talks about building on the foundations of Christ), we see those who are not moving on from milk to solid food. They are not building up, they are messing around in the mud. Foundations are there to be built on.
The second is that we do not need to question the foundation. Now of course we gain from studying it, or Him, and questions are good if we are learning through them. But we can rely on what God has done.
In Ripon there is a problem with Gypsum under the ground. Houses can suddenly drop into holes that weren’t there the night before. People check, particularly when buying houses that the foundations are solid. However, we don’t need constantly to dig down and check that Jesus is secure or that His death and resurrection is still holding us before the throne of grace.
Thirdly, though, we do need to be careful about the things that we build on the foundations. We are right to take certain things for granted in our own faith; to rely on them as foundational in the way we work out our salvation. However, we should always be aware that they are things that we have come to rely on, other wise we can become very judgemental very quickly.
Let me give you an example. My wife and I choose not to shop on Sundays. We find it a helpful way to mirror the work of God in creation, to invest in family and worship for ourselves and others, and to bring rhythm and order to the week. This matters to us, so, for example, as we have been looking for houses recently we chose not to look at them on Sunday afternoons despite it being the easiest time for us as it would make the estate agent have to work and thus disrupt their family Sundays.
Do we, though, or even should we condemn those who do work on Sundays? Certainly not. I have worked 90% of the Sundays of my adult life. There are questions that we would want to pose, but you can still get to heaven if you are spotted in Morrisons on a Sunday afternoon. This is a foundational thing for our family which helps in our faith, but it is not actually part of the foundation.
I don’t know if that ramble makes any sense, but it was what I was pondering as I wielded a pickaxe.
John 4
ReplyDelete21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
Do we need physical foundations and poustinia to escape the world? But foundations that enable us to interact with the world? I was born on top of a shop. My family chose to close and have Sunday as a family day. The security and love of my family set me up, then I started to work Sundays as a nurse. Tried to preach but the methodist circuit rota and hospital ones conflicted.
I often worry about my children... am I giving them 'quality time' as a working Mum am I giving them a foundation of emotional and spiritual security that will set them up to deal all that the world will throw at them?
Church and work has fragmented my family and historically from my in-laws as they are a clergy family. David called his Dad, 'father and farther away' not physically but emotionally, as he secreted himself in the study.
The best foundation we can give our children is ourselves.
Children certainly need good foundations and I completely agree that security in the love of their parents is deeply foundational. It also helps, of course, if the parents are building on solid foundations and share them with the children too.
ReplyDeleteI doubt this is a new point, but we can only share what we have. Faith matters in parenting.