You may now begin... May 2007
8 February 2008 - 9:14pm — Sarah Hall
For nearly a third of my life, the month of May has meant just one terrible thing: revision for exams. And now it seems to be built into my system. Just when the weather's usually starting to get warm and sunny, a warning bell sounds at the back of my mind. You should be revising, a little voice whispers in your head, and if you don't, you're going to regret it.
Of course, these days exams aren't the only way to test how well students know their stuff. Now there's continuous assessment. On the positive side, going over just one or two topics every few weeks doesn't induce as much panic as having to review the whole subject. On the negative side, now it's every month, week and day of the year that the little voice in the back of your head mutters, You really should be getting down to some work. It's a bit like being a minister.
But forgetting about students and whingeing ministers, how can we Christians develop in our faith? Maybe it's a case of continual assessment, with God presenting us with test situations on the way through life. When things are going well, the whole question of working on our faith may be far from our minds. We're doing our best, so God must be happy. When things go wrong, on the other hand, one of the first questions that comes to mind may be, Why me? What have I done to deserve this? Wrestling with that sort of question may test our faith to the limit. So it makes sense to work on it before trouble arises; unlike school exams, we may not be given much notice.
But what's the syllabus? There are three ways we can explore our faith; depending on our personality, we may find one more congenial - which may mean we need to work harder on the others! Firstly, we need to get our minds around what it is we in the URC believe about God and our world. Recently I've been preparing people for membership in St Andrew's, and I've been impressed all over again by the summary of our beliefs in the Statement of the Nature, Faith and Order of the URC at 761 in Rejoice and Sing. If any of it doesn't make sense, ask me! Secondly, we need to let that understanding work out in how we pray and live. We may know that loving God, loving our neighbours and loving ourselves is what we are about, but it will take a lifetime of practice to make us perfect. And thirdly, we need to let our changed lives influence the world around us, in speech and in action.
Everyone has their own way of working on their faith. Some people will build up a Christian character through a lifetime of quiet endeavour, while unexpected others will rise to the occasion in moments of crisis. When Jesus told his friends not to judge others, he may well have been warning us against expecting others to do things the way we do them ourselves. And God's love for us does not - fortunately - depend on how well worked out our faith is. Our friendship with Jesus, not our great intellect, our heroic virtue or the way we've changed the world, assures us of a pass mark in our final exams. But just as exams are meant to teach us skills we'll use all our lives, so working on our faith strengthens that relationship with God that is at the centre of all we believe and do.
Of course, these days exams aren't the only way to test how well students know their stuff. Now there's continuous assessment. On the positive side, going over just one or two topics every few weeks doesn't induce as much panic as having to review the whole subject. On the negative side, now it's every month, week and day of the year that the little voice in the back of your head mutters, You really should be getting down to some work. It's a bit like being a minister.
But forgetting about students and whingeing ministers, how can we Christians develop in our faith? Maybe it's a case of continual assessment, with God presenting us with test situations on the way through life. When things are going well, the whole question of working on our faith may be far from our minds. We're doing our best, so God must be happy. When things go wrong, on the other hand, one of the first questions that comes to mind may be, Why me? What have I done to deserve this? Wrestling with that sort of question may test our faith to the limit. So it makes sense to work on it before trouble arises; unlike school exams, we may not be given much notice.
But what's the syllabus? There are three ways we can explore our faith; depending on our personality, we may find one more congenial - which may mean we need to work harder on the others! Firstly, we need to get our minds around what it is we in the URC believe about God and our world. Recently I've been preparing people for membership in St Andrew's, and I've been impressed all over again by the summary of our beliefs in the Statement of the Nature, Faith and Order of the URC at 761 in Rejoice and Sing. If any of it doesn't make sense, ask me! Secondly, we need to let that understanding work out in how we pray and live. We may know that loving God, loving our neighbours and loving ourselves is what we are about, but it will take a lifetime of practice to make us perfect. And thirdly, we need to let our changed lives influence the world around us, in speech and in action.
Everyone has their own way of working on their faith. Some people will build up a Christian character through a lifetime of quiet endeavour, while unexpected others will rise to the occasion in moments of crisis. When Jesus told his friends not to judge others, he may well have been warning us against expecting others to do things the way we do them ourselves. And God's love for us does not - fortunately - depend on how well worked out our faith is. Our friendship with Jesus, not our great intellect, our heroic virtue or the way we've changed the world, assures us of a pass mark in our final exams. But just as exams are meant to teach us skills we'll use all our lives, so working on our faith strengthens that relationship with God that is at the centre of all we believe and do.
