Faith. Belief. Trust. Completion. Contentment. (Random-ish Collection of Thoughts)

I am incomplete. In the midst of the becoming, I am not a completed, finished whole. Even with Christ by my side, I cannot be complete until I stand before Him at the end of time. That is when the becoming will be complete, and I with it, for He will place that final brush-stroke, and the masterpiece that is me will be ready to be unveiled.

Neither am I content. I cannot be truly content until I am fully complete. I can, however, experience joy and peace. Contentment is equivalent to stagnation. I cannot grow, change, become without discontent.

Contentment and completion are not fruits of the Spirit.

Neither is trust, which is central in my personal struggles - and those of so many others in the world, I am sure. Nor is belief a fruit of the Spirit, for belief is not faith.

Faith is a fruit of the Spirit. We come to faith by the Spirit, once we confess our belief in Him. Then, and only then, are we able to begin the learning of trust.

Knowledge is not belief, though it is a difficult distinction to make. One can know all of the things that are a part of their religion without having either true belief or faith.

We struggle because we are human, and, hence, imperfect. Expecting perfection leads to the wrong kind of discontent, just as settling for imperfection leads to the wrong kind of contentment.

Being content in Christ, in the midst of the terrible things in our lives, does not mean that there is no sorrow, no grief, no depression, no negativity in our hearts. Rather, it means that we are able, eventually, to see past these things to the glory of the future He has promised us - that future He is preparing us for even in the midst of horror. This is refinement, the process of being refined... the process of the becoming.

In John White's The Tower of Geburah, the children descend into a pool and walk across the bottom, then climb out the other side in new clothes - royal garb. While in the pool, they come to a mirror in which they see a reflection of some aspect of their future there in Anthropos. In a later book in that series, The Iron Sceptre, the cousin of the children in the first book must confront a false image of herself in a mirror. It's a pretty picture, and her true self is decidedly not beautiful, but it isn't really who she is. In the end, she breaks the mirror... choosing to be who she was created to be instead of that which she once wished she was.

These things are all intricately connected, woven together to form the tapestry that is our lives. It is not finished and cannot be completed until judgement.