More Ourselves, Not Less....

With the remaining quotes that struck my fancy, I am going to wrap up this impromptu series of posts gleaned from Cure For the Common Life.

He tailored the curves of your life to fit an empty space in his jigsaw puzzle.

He made you you-nique

1 Corinthians 12:4-7 confirms this...

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; 6 and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

And why do we sometimes have such a difficult time figuring out what our “you-nique” purpose is? Max says:

We suffer from poor I-sight. Not eyesight, a matter of distorted vision that lenses can correct, but I-sight. Poor I-sight blurs your view, not of the world but of yourself.

How do we clear up our poor I-sight?

Ephesians 1:11 (The Message)

^11-12It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.

In the book Max writes about an excerpt from a biography about the life of Thomas Merton

Before Thomas Merton followed Christ he followed money, fame and society. He shocked many when he exchanged it all for the life of a Trappist monk in a Kentucky Monastery. Business world colleagues speculated what he must have become. They envisioned a silent, suffering version of their friend, dutifully sludging through a life of penance. After thirteen years, a colleague, Mark van Doren, visited him and then reported back to the others” “He looked a little older; but as we sat and talked I could see no important difference in him, and once I interrupted a reminiscence of his by laughing, “Tom, “ I said, “you haven’t changed at all. “Why should I? Here,” he said, “our duty is to be more ourselves, not less”

And so in Christ we become more ourselves, not less. You-nique….