Life and Faith move on

Some of you may have visited the Lake District in England and been to Dove Cottage where the famous romantic poet William Wordsworth once lived and wandered on the surrounding hills above Grasmere. One of his best known poems, Intimations of Immortality, recalls his early years wandering in those hills. He speaks of a time when

But, then, in his older years he wistfully continues:

We can all identify with that sense of loss, the passing of the freshness of childhood and youth, or when we first fell in love. Looking back everything now seemed different then, before the ravishes of time robbed us of our dreams or dampened our enthusiasm for life and made us a little cynical. Perhaps it wasn’t quite as rosy as we think it was, but it is so that we are now at a different point in our life’s journey marked by achievements and memories, marred by disappointments, mistakes, and expectations unfulfilled.

Woven into these latter day reflections we may also sense that our early steps in Christian faith, the intensity in which we set out on the path with sure knowledge of God and empowered by the Spirit, are no longer as they once were. William Cowper a generation before Wordsworth yearned for “a closer walk with God” and wistfully spoke of the “blessedness” he “knew when first” he “saw the Lord.” As we look back to those times when our Christian lives were fresh and we were in the vanguard of renewing the church and changing the world, we can identify with Cowper’s sense of spiritual ageing.

Last week I led a seminar in Stellenbosch on the devotional life of the minister as part of a programme of continuing education for ministers and priests. Together we explored the need for ongoing spiritual formation throughout our lives, not just in training for ordination. As I listened to questions and conversation, I observed a subtle difference between the older and younger ministers in how they understood their present journey of faith. For faith does not exist in a vacuum; it is related to the stages of life through which we pass. So it is quite natural that we should see and experience things differently as the years pass. If we did not go through these stages we would not grow beyond our childhood to maturity whether in body or spirit. We are rightly and necessarily at a different point in our journey now than when we began.

While we often read I Corinthians 13 at marriage services, Paul did not write it for that purpose. He wrote in response to conflict in the church, the result of the immature use of spiritual gifts: tongues, and prophecy, knowledge and faith itself. All of these without love, he writes, may be impressive and create a lot of noise, but they do not last. It reminded him of his childhood, perhaps even his early days as a new convert. But the journey of faith interwoven with life had taught him that however important those spiritual gifts might be, unless they lead to a mature grasp and expression of faith they are of no value at all. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” Paul no longer claimed to know and see everything as clearly as he thought he once did, for he now saw through a glass darkly. But his journey in faith had not stopped, on the contrary, he pressed forward towards the goal of knowing Christ more fully. And in doing so he now knew what really mattered. Without love the rest was empty; even of faith and hope are incomplete.

Yes, it may be that the things we now see do not have the same youthful certainty and excitement as once they did; it may be true that the blessedness we once knew when “first we saw the Lord” is no longer what it then was. But through the years we have hopefully learnt to grasp with firmer hand those gifts of the Spirit which endure and without which the rest is of no lasting value. Hopefully we have grown both in knowledge and in grace, and not remained trapped in past spiritual experience. We may love differently at seventy than we did at twenty, but love is still love, hopefully deeper and richer. So let us relish where we now are in the journey of faith and life; be open to where the Spirit may still lead us, and accept that the newness of life in Christ is a gift for everyday not just an experience we once had.

(John W. de Gruchy is Emeritus Professor of Christian Studies, University of Cape Town and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch. This is a weekly meditation given at the Eucharist service at Volmoed Christian Community Centre, Hermanus.)