The lessons over the past two weeks have led me back to my love of the Epistle of James; especially chapter 2 with is "faith without works is dead." It has reminded me that there is a balance between a spiritual laziness that comes with the absolute assurance of salvation (and Jesus is comin' soon) and the heresy of work's righteousness.
I found that especially this morning as my rector and I thought about James 2 in the context of our lectionary readings. "Works are the exercise for faith" is what we came up with. When the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith, they aren't asking that they could have more faith, because, well frankly, I don't believe that's possible. Instead, they are asking for it to be strengthened; and boy will it be.
My rector put it like this. Faith is like the muscles we have in our body; they are static and finite in number. When we exercise them we don't add muscles per se, but we cause them to grow and tone. So "works are the exercise for faith" says to me that faith will not increase quantitatively, but is toned and grown by becoming more Christlike.
Too much caffeine today - this gets a rambling label for sure.
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