Our New Home Is What We Offer, What I Carry is a Blue Back Pack (part 2 of 8)

We share in the atoning work of Christ’s own life by this Good News. Part of the gift of this Good News—not the only part, or even the most important part—is  that it somehow gradually  frees and leads our attention. I wonder if it is an overly practical point to make:  that when we are more and more freed from the power of pride and lies, we spend less and less time defending ourselves, taking things back, proving ourselves and making things right. There is, then, or will be, simply  more time to give ourselves to other things. 

I’ve tried, again, to even say it simply. That Good News changes what we trust. What we trust gradually changes what we pay attention to. What we pay attention to eventually changes what we even want. And this is a sign of hope. 

When we share in the atoning work of Christ’s own life by this Good News. When a simple rhythm of scripture, prayer, and friends is our life with this Good News.  Receiving Good News, staying with Good News, working with Good News. 

When our attention is a pilgrim in a nightmare. And Good News is our only shepherd. When our attention  must be gently yoked and harnessed to this Good News by His own Spirit, led out of bad things through hard things, toward all the good things Christ Himself is, and the small good things we offer in His Name. 

Because, as far as I can tell and as the prayerbook says, “to know you is eternal life and to serve you is perfect freedom.”

Part of the atoning work of Christ’s own life  should be–sometimes very suddenly and sometimes only gradually–the gift of gradually being  able  to  pay attention, to something other than myself. To give myself to other things by giving them my attention. That is, part of the gift of the atoning work of Christ’s own life  should be the gradual ability to pay more and more attention to something other than myself. Because that is what hope feels like, hope feels like gradually being able to pay attention. 

Because Good News changes what we trust. And what we trust gradually changes what we pay attention to. And what  we pay attention to eventually changes what we even want. And that is a reason for hope. 

When our attention is a pilgrim in a nightmare. And Good News is our only shepherd. When our attention  must be gently yoked and harnessed to this Good News by His own Spirit, led out of bad things through hard things, toward all the good things Christ Himself is, and the small good things we offer in His Name. 

The atoning work of Christ gradually frees and leads our attention. And then we gradually learn to pay attention, to stay with this Good News and work with this Good News. That is, ultimately, what I think it means to gradually learn to pay attention: to stay with this Good News, to work with this Good News, with attention He frees and the attention He leads. Gradually learning to pay more and more attention to all the good things Christ Himself is and the small good things we offer in His Name.