I already told him the story of the day I was talking impatiently with my wife on a Sunday morning, when my 9-year-old son spoke:
“Dad, is that how a Christian should talk to his wife?
Sarcastically, I said
? What do you think?
Answered:
“What I think doesn’t make any difference, what would God think?
I went to my room and immediately two thoughts came to me: first, my pride was hurt. I want to be a hero to my son and I was ashamed to have affected him like that with my attitude and my words, but it didn’t last long. Right after that, I thought, how can God love me as much as he gives me a simple dose of care in the midst of this little mundane moment in the Tripp family bathroom?
It’s love on such a beautiful level that I can’t translate it into words, it was just a moment in a room, in a family home, on a block, in a neighborhood of a city in a state, in a country on a continent, in a hemisphere of a planet in the universe. Still, God was present at that time, working to continue the transformation, moment by moment, of my heart.
Why am I telling this story? Well, that moment has come again, it’s the subject of blogs, press articles, TV shows and numerous Twitter messages, it’s the time of the annual rites of dramatic New Year’s purposes, driven by hope for immediate and meaningful changes in personal life. Life.
But the reality is that few smokers quit smoking due to a single moment of decision, few obese people have become thin and healthy due to a moment of dramatic commitment, few people who were very indebted have changed their financial lifestyle because, therefore, they have decided to see the old year give way to new ones and few marriages have been transformed by a single dramatic resolution.
Are the changes significant? Yes, in a way, is it the essential commitment?Of course! There are ways in which our lives are shaped by the commitments we make, but biblical Christianity, the center of which is the gospel of Jesus Christ, does not place its hopes on great dramatic moments of change.
The fact is that the transformative power of grace is more of an ordinary process than a series of dramatic events. Personal, life and heart changes are always a process. And where is this process going? This happens where you and I live every day. And where do we live? Well, each of us has an address, our lives don’t go from big moments to big moments, no, we live in the most ordinary routine.
Many of us won’t be in the history books. Most of us will have three or four moments of decision-making in our lives, and decades after death, people will barely remember what our lives were like. You and I live in the small days, and if God is not the Lord of our little times and works to shape each other, then there is no hope for us, because it is in these moments that we are living.
The small moments of life are deeply important precisely because they are the place where we live and through which we form, this is where I believe that dramatic Christianity puts us in trouble, this can lead us to minimize the meaning of the small moments of life and the grace of the small changes that lie there. And because we minimize the small moments in which we live, we tend to ignore the sin that is exposed to it. And then we don’t seek the grace that’s offered to us.
You see, life is not defined in two or three dramatic moments, but in 10,000 small moments. The character that was formed in these small moments is what shapes your way of reacting to the great moments of life.
What leads to major personal changes?
And what makes it possible? A tireless, transformative and ordinary grace. Jesus is it? Emmanuel not because he came to Earth, but because he made you a home for him, that is, he is present and active in all the ordinary moments of his daily life.
And what he does In these little moments, he fulfills all the promises of redemption he has made. In these unforgettable moments, work to save yourself and transform yourself into its likeness. By sovereign grace, it puts you in those little daily moments, created to take you beyond your character, wisdom and grace, so that you can seek the help and hope that can only be found in it. In a life-changing process, is it deconstructing and rebuilding you again?And that’s exactly what we all need!
Yes, you and I must commit to change, but not in a way that yearns for great moments of transformation, but in a way that finds joy and is faithful to the daily, step-by-step process of acknowledging sin, he confesses. Repent and believe in forgiveness. And in these little moments, we promise to remember Paul’s words in Romans 8. 32:
He who spared not even his own Son, but abandoned him for all of us, how can he not give us everything with him and for free?
Thus, we wake up every day committed to living the small moments of our lives with open eyes and humble hearts.