October always puts me into a heavy time mode, a time when I reflect on another season of my life; how I have used time, and passed time. Now, in the lengthening of shadows, I see God’s creation slowing for a time of rest and sleep. For our Heavenly Father’s animal and plant creation it is a time of transformation in the silence of rest and darkness. Now as I look back I can see how God has changed me, and I wonder how God will continue to change me? I where God is taking the church, changed this church, changed you in the time we have known each other?

All Christian life is a call to change; to conversion, to metanoia, to the rebirth and blossoming of the new person in Christ -- an outward-looking life. So long as we dwell on nothing but our own problems, our own sorrows, our own health, our own disappointments, then our own life is a hypochondriacal thing. But, as our spirits join with God’s Spirit, God drives us out of our comfortable complacency and security into uncomfortable places, and, in turn, into greater reliance on Him. 

Simone Weil said, “It is grace that forms the void inside of us and it is grace alone that can fill that void.” The ancients saw this void time as incubation, transformation, and necessary hibernation. The grace of God is constantly leading us to a state of emptiness, incubation, transformation, and hibernation. It is an ongoing process, something that should be happening to us in our Christian journey. This kind of space in our lives is sacred space, and yet, it is the very space we so often seek to avoid. When we seek to avoid the places of transformation in our life (dark places, many times), often we also void place of spiritual creativity -- and try to avoid God Himself, who often works in darkness, where we have no control. 

 As we grow in our relationship with God, our life also becomes an upward-looking life. We begin to see life in terms of the light of eternity, and in the light of God. Ordinary things become important, and even exciting, because we do them unto the Lord. Hard things become easier, because we do nothing alone.

Our call to conversion is a call that leads us somewhere. We are not on a treadmill but a pilgrimage, so that, even in the wilderness and darkness, we can be sure that our Christian journey is taking us somewhere. 

 Christianity makes sense only in the light of our possible transformation. In the busy-ness of our lives, it is easy to forget the fundamental aims and direction of all Christian living. God can and does work when we least expect it. Outward, onward, upward -- these are the directions of our Christian life and journey, and when we live looking in these directions, in truth we can go on really living until we die.