a continuation. . .

The following are some "post" thoughts from my Dec. 29th's entry (the retrospective).

John and I have been talking a lot about what God has been doing in our spirits. It feels He has shattered our faith into small pieces and now we're in the process of glueing them back together again. But instead of trying to put the pieces back together the same way, God is creating a new "art piece" in us.

We've been Christians for a long time and I guess it came to a point where everything we did and said felt artificial, routine and expected. Having grown up going to church, having Christian friends I started to see a lot of hypocrisy and pride in me and in many around me who had claimed to be Christians. At the time, being a Christian felt like being part of a social club and I knew there was something wrong about this. Was it about following a set of rules, being a good person and looking down on others because they didn't do the same thing I did? Was I looking for a pat on the back from God? I was.

It wasn't until I started working in the inner-city in Vancouver that I began to see how warped my perception of being a follower of Christ had become. The beauty of working in the innercity is that there's a "rawness" about everything - the environment, the people. People there are real. All the ugliness and scum of our natures are exposed, out in the open for all to see and I think that's why it's hard to work there. We want to keep it all hidden away so no one can see how broken and ugly we really are.

Maybe it was here that I actually saw and experienced the true nature of man and God. I wanted that raw, realness I was in, in my own life, in my relationship with God and in my relationships with other people. I didn't know then but the only way I was going to get this was by completely smashing up all the layers of my Christian Self and starting from nothing again - or should I say God, again. Everything I held true about God, worship, my faith, my salvation needed to be pulled out and burned.

Slowly God is putting me back together again.