The Fruitful

I.        Vow of Affirmation

“We devote our daily life to God, and to serving our neighbors as images of God”

3. I will live, speak and act with truth, compassion, kindness, gentleness, mercy, patience, generosity, and expectant hope that others will respond in kind.

In our modern world, we often label things in their proper categories. This filing folder is for my tax documents, that shelf is for my cookbooks, that hour is for watching The Bachelor.  When it comes to spiritual and religious life we may make similar divisions, thinking of living peacefully as one arena over here in one box to be used at certain times, and over in another container is missional living, and living worshipfully is over there in yet another distinct arena of our lives. But these discrete divisions, while they seem neat and tidy, do not very adequately describe our following all of Jesus in all of life. 

 And the call to Christian peacemaking is no exception. It is not some side show to discipleship that can be separated out from other practices like prayer, service and generosity. It involves our whole being and takes place in the whole of life. It involves our daily thinking and speaking as well as our acting. It is in part a product--or a fruit--of God's Holy Spirit within us. And these many diverse fruits of the Spirit do not simply each hang on their own vine, with peace over here and patience over there. They come together in a whole cluster!

The Very Image

I.        Vow of Affirmation

“We devote our daily life to God, and to serving our neighbors as images of God”

    
       2.  I will seek the image of God in each and every person;  
               I will treat them as fully worthy of the good I desire for myself.

It’s the cashier at your grocery store, the neighbor whose name you don’t know but you wave to every morning, the sleazebag womanizer on that “reality” show, your favorite song leader at church, your most opinionated and least favorite coworker, your implied national enemy, it’s the gaggle of high schoolers each with eyes and thumbs locked to their phones,  it’s your mother.  The image of God. It is in all of them, it’s in you fractured and trampled in the mud though it may be. 

By Through Painted Eyes via Flickr

“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…

So God created humankind 
     in God’s image,
     in the image of God 
          he created them;
     male and female 
          God created them.”

Our Most Basic Offering

 I.        Vow of Affirmation

“We devote our daily life to God, and to serving our neighbors as images of God:”

1. I will daily offer my life to God with reverence and a living faith; I will daily pray to be used as a servant by God for the good of my neighbors near and far. 

(Photo by justin tippins via Flickr)

During the opening to Lent, we may sound like a recording from the first week of the New Year: “I resolve to eat less and healthier, to be a nicer person, to turn this resolution into a new habit.” How many of us really make it through more than a few weeks of our resolutions? 

But the commitments we make at the beginning of Lent are of a different nature. Unlike most New Year’s resolutions, Lenten vows are made as a covenant between us and our God (and hopefully our faith community). The focus shifts toward serving God and others more than just our own self-improvement.  And rightly focused, God—more than our human initiative and willpower—becomes the source of our resolve and strength to carry out our Lenten vows.