Cambridge terms run for 8 weeks, Thursday-Wednesday, and people here often keep track of where they are in term by marking the fact that we are ‘near the end of Week 1’ etc. There is also the notoriety of the ‘Week 5 blues’ – supposedly because most people are worn out by that point in the term, but find themselves only at the half-way point.
To make the way we relate to the different weeks a little more positive, Siân and I are naming the weeks by a different fruit of the spirit. This is now the end of Week Faithfulness. Here are our reflections.
Siân takes a hiatus
Siân has had a busy week, with three trips out of Cambridge for different teaching applications and assessments and interviews… She’s got herself a teaching place, but she’s lost out on time and Cambridge is not always so forgiving of that, so she’s sitting this week out! You’re stuck with only my reflections, guess you may as well stop here and just come back next week 😉
Rachel – Faithfulness is keeping in step
Just on from the verse in Galatians that lists out the fruit of the spirit is another verse, that says the following:
“Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” Galatians 5:25
This week I have thought of faithfulness as being about this ‘keeping in step’, about making a choice to live in pursuit of God.
In many ways this fits in with the thoughts I posted a few days ago: we have a choice as to whether we offer up who we are and what we have to God in praise, trusting that our small offerings will be multiplied, or whether we act in a way that assumes ownership, believing that we will produce fruit on our own strength.
I would prefer it if this choice operated on a One-Time-for-All-Time basis, but it seems that this not the way. Instead, we must repeatedly make a choice to pursue God. To yearn for being Christ-like, to use each present moment to live for his glory.
This consistent choice-making is faithfulness.
Dorothy Day (more mentions of her to come I’m sure, I am only half way through her book…) says grace works ‘by little and by little’. While we are saved when we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour, we are transformed and made holy only by the persistent choice to pursue God and die to ourselves. Holiness is only by faithfulness.
And faithfulness is only by ‘keeping in step’.
thejoyofrachel 
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