Manning Monday

To grasp the truth of the gospel is to fall on our faces in both sorrow and gratitude. To live as Jesus lived is to move off the floor and into the world. “The imitation of Christ,” writes George Montague, “goes to the very assimilation of his interior attitudes, his way of thinking.” The late Romano Guardini once stated that Francis of Assisi “allowed Jesus Christ to become transparent in his personality.” If this is what it means to live as a Christian, why are the personalities of so many pious, proper, and correct Christians so opaque? Why doesn’t the peace of Christ reign in our hearts, “since as members of the one body we have been called to peace” (Colossians 3:15)? Why don’t the gentleness, compassion and trust that Much Afraid saw shining in the eyes of the Shepherd (in Hannah Hurnard’s Hinds’ Feet on High Places) shine from our eyes? Why don’t our contagious joy, enthusiasm, and gratitude infect others with a love for Christ Jesus? Why doesn’t the radiant loveliness of the Lord stream from our personalities? Why aren’t we windows to God at work? Why aren’t we transparent?

To have the mind of Christ Jesus, to think his thoughts, share his ideals, dream his dreams, throb with his desires, replace our natural responses to persons and situations with the concern of Jesus, and make the mind-set of Christ so completely our own that “the life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20), is not the secret of or the shortcut to transparency. It is transparency. (The Importance of Being Foolish, pages 37-38)


Not anything to add. More of Christ and less of me. That's what transparency is really all about, isn't it?




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