Module Two: Returning
Exploring how the idea of being created in love gives a sense of joy to repentance.
In preparation for this week's material, please read Chapter 2 of The Mystic Way of Evangelism, “Love is God’s Meaning.”
After you have completed the above, choose one of the the following:
"Falling Asleep" from Wendell Berry: New Collected Poems, pg 232
How is it that we have forgotten that we are loved? As the soil is renewed through cycles of growth and decay, so we must also be cyclical people. We must be be willing to be poured out and filled. We must embrace our periods of fallowness just as we celebrate moments of growth.
But it is weak to return. It is weak to ask to be ministered to. It is weak to admit that we have left the way of Christ.
It is weak.
T’shuvah comes from the Hebrew root shub (pronounced shoob), and means to turn or return. In this returning, there is a sense that where you are is not where you would be if you remembered who you are.
Once we remember that the soil beneath our feet once teemed with life and now languishes from overuse, once we remember that the we once teemed with life and now languish from overuse or neglect or avarice, once we remember this is the body of Christ broken for you and for many, then we will return with joy—the joy that comes from the “affirmation of one's essential being in spite of desires and anxieties.”
And in that weakness, find grace.
How does being created in love and bearing the image of the Divine make repentance a thing of joy?