Sometimes, following faithfully after Jesus no longer makes sense, our first love has become our last love, focus is blurred, purpose confused, joy is muted.
Sometimes, for all our pragmatism, insistence on faith as "practical" and truth as "applied", Jesus' demands sound like high ideals and begin to sound ludicrously impractical.
Sometimes, we have to admit that our understanding of what it means to be a Christian gravitates downwards towards playing safe, staying predictable, being non-disruptive and we begin to believe following Jesus is easily accomodated within our otherwise busy multi-tasking lives.
Sometimes, reading what Jesus says has the same minimal impact as humming our favourite music, with the lyrics and beat familiarly and smoothly pulsing through headphones into a mind preoccupied by other stuff.
Sometimes, complacency becomes so comfortable, so unnoticeably normal, that we are in danger of losing our edge, closing our eyes, cruising to a fuel efficient slowness, at which point the only thing that might save us is, well, Jesus.
Sometimes, what is needed is a new vision, a recovered love, a re-orientation of the heart.
Sometimes, being a Christian means believing what is wildly implausible but true.
Sometimes, Jesus asks something that is risky and disruptive and demands our whole self all over again.
Sometimes, the soul is healed by unfamiliar music inviting us to move again in God's direction, along unfamiliar roads.
And sometimes, it is the call of Christ coming with resurgent force that electrifies and defibrillates the spirit, and re-establishes the rhythms of our discipleship.
So Lord,
Once you called our name, and we followed; but sometime, somewhere along the way, the sound of your voice diminished beyond our hearing:
Lord forgive our pragmatism and open our minds to the wildly impractical practices of your Kingdom of love and peace-making
Lord replace our complacency with urgency, and replenish our hearts with a holy recklessness turned outwards in compassion and service
Lord save us from the exhaustion of multi-tasking the ordinary, and give us energy for gestures of redemption and enthusiasm for the extraordinary
Lord make us sick and tired of the familiar, the normal, the routine, and call us once again to take up again the cross, the cost, and the consequence of following after you.
May your Kingdom come, here, now, in me, in your world, Amen
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