8 December 2024 #workpartiesforholiness

How is the foundational work of spiritual renovation coming along? Fill in some prayer hour holes? Sanding away at some habitual sin? Looking for any spots you might have overlooked in the light of Jesus? In the words of Baruch, are you making your lofty pride or distrust of the Lord’s plan lie low, and filling in the age-old depths of anxiety and gorges of gossip or negativity to be the level ground of grace and peace? Are you showering your friends and relatives the splendor of God’s glory and wrapping a cloak (of justice) for the poor? Are you doing your repair work in joy?

Preparing our hearts and souls with joy is indeed the theme of this week, the virtue that negates so much of what is wrong in our culture. We see our model in Paul’s reading today, “I pray always with joy in my every prayer for all of you…that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it.” If we mix that in with John’s call for preparation, we have a pretty good idea for this week’s “to-do” list: Remembering that the work of our soul’s renovation is to be done in joy. That’s the hard part, right? 

We don’t see the long days, weeks, months – and even years - of healing our hearts and sanding out the sin of our soul as joy-filled. We see it as hard work. All that filling, leveling, and patching require a lot of manual labor.

Today’s psalm tells us that when the Lord brought his people out of exile, at the end of their hard labor (physically and spiritually), he brought them back in a caravan, surrounded by those they knew and loved. That’s the reason “small group studies” work. Everyone is headed in the same direction: toward holiness. 

That’s this week’s tip for renovation success: embarking on a faith journey with friends makes the renovation work joy-filled. If you need a work-party to help you on your little renovation project of the soul, join one of ours or gather some friends together on your own. You won’t regret it. 

#workpartiesforholiness