7 February

Dear friends,

During my study leave, the age-old question of the relationship between faith and fabric kept me busy. How is what we believe connected to how we live? What is the relationship between God’s gracious and unfathomable act of salvation and our human action for peace, justice, and so on? As Karl Barth asked, how can we do “the little righteousness”?

I was therefore also surprised on Sunday when this question surfaced again as we met with the 20s30s group after church. How are church and my faith connected to everyday life? That this connection matters is, of course, clear throughout the Bible. For centuries, the church has expressed this through the phrase lex orandi, lex credendi (the rule of prayer is the rule of belief). More recently, we have added lex (con)vivendi. That is to say, how we pray and how we worship are intrinsically linked to our life and conduct. And yet, our daily life is grappling with the “how”. How can we, today, give embodied expression to our faith?

I was also surprised to see that this was exactly the question that came up during the last junior church discussion, as they reflected on the quote, “The Lord helps those who help themselves.” Giles writes:

“This quotation is strictly speaking not Biblical - but by the end of the conversation during the service this morning, our church teenagers agreed that on every page, the Bible commands us to take responsibility and be proactive in our faith, in every sphere of our lives.

However, as a paradox, we also agreed that we need God’s grace to redeem us from our sin- something we cannot do ourselves, being each of us owned by our selfish human nature. And this fact was also already stated by Rev. Dion Forster in his prayers during the service, which we heard before our meeting.

Finally, in discussing world leaders, one teenager came up with another well-known quote-‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’- a topic we decided would be more than adequate for another time!” 

And so, we keep on searching for this “how”. We keep on looking for those places in our lives and world where we can indeed do “the little righteousness”, and we trust that God is actively bringing about its ultimate fulfilment. 

Marius Louw

___