Spiritual Vision, Growth and Holiness

Found this commentary on the website spirithome.com and really liked it :

“One way to envision this is to look at Jesus as the Light from different angles. The first vision is that you see the Light: you experience the ‘something’ that pierces darkness and drives it away. The second vision is that you see by way of the Light: you see the blessed wretchedness and fallen splendor of the world He so loved. You see the poverty and the delusions of grandeur, the cowardice and the courage, the insight and the stupidity. You can see it for what it is when the Light shines on it. You even see yourself, out from the shadows, your body, your tastes, your visual effects. The third kind of vision is to see along the Light, past the peepholes and the crevices the Light sneaks through, out past the boughs and birds and nevels and the blue sky, to the blazing Source whose vision is branded upon you.

Within a devotional outlook on life, spiritual growth never ends. No matter how well you may think you have done, there’s always a whole lot more around the corner. This is a challenge, not a problem, but it doesn’t always feel that way. For any practices and disciplines you use, progress will often be like trying to run through a quagmire; the feet are weighed down by the thick mud, the legs pull, and you go very slowly. But you go nonetheless.

Holiness does not exist for its own sake; the moment it does, it’s no longer holy. The root of holiness is love. You can’t be holy for your own sake; the best of your own holiness is rags before God. As Paul pointed out about holiness, ‘it is not me, but Christ who lives in me’. Working on your own holiness for its own sake misses the point. If you look in the Bible at where God commands or commissions – say, at the Ten Commandments, or the Great Commission – you’ll find that they’re not focused on you. It’s ‘your neighbors’, ‘your mother and your father’, ‘the Kingdom of God’, ‘love your enemies’, ‘lend to others, expecting nothing in return’, ‘go therefore and make disciples’. God’s commands go outward from us, not inward. So, any turning inward is, at best, a temporary strategy for becoming whole enough to follow God the way we ought: by serving others and bearing witness. God’s own concern is directed out towards others. You are called to live the same way.”