Conversion

I have talked about our "big board" before, the huge sheet of white paper in our dining room that we put down ideas and remarks about our upcoming trip. It is mostly a way for us to organize our thoughts. Some friends of ours, Seth and Amy, were over a while back for dinner and Seth started laughing about something we had written down. "Your not sure if you want to convert people" he said, looking puzzled. "Yeah, we want to convert people, that is why we are going, so people see the love of Jesus and can't resist it," I responded. He pointed to our big board where I had written some things down about whether we should convert our diesel RV to run on vegetable oil. On it, in black sharpie, it read: "Convert or not convert? Conversion is not cost effective, however, it is better for God's environment and it will allow for more conversations with people."

I just got done reading a biography on Francis of Assisi. Very interesting, I can't necessarily comment on Francis, I am still processing, but I can say - very interesting. In one section the author, Donald Spoto, comments on conversion as something that is a process more than an event, "to covert is to embark on a process." I believe one of the great myths of Christianity is that everything will instantly change when they "convert," people mistakenly believe that it is an event, not the beginning of a mysterious, and sometimes arduous journey. Conversion is a process, a constant search for the heart of God. He may reveal things to you in one area then expose you in another. You may be able to turn over one area of your life completely to Him, when He is really asking for some other corner. All of this humbling you to the understanding of your need for God. Molding and shaping you into a vessel in which His will is done. "This cannot be achieved by a single act of will, nor does it occur in a day, or after a single event," Spoto says. It is simply - consistently responding to God, who invites us to know Him deeper in subtle and sometimes subversive (and always radical) ways.

As Spoto continues: "We begin to acknowledge, accept and know God -- always imperfectly and darkly -- when we seek to be free of our idolatry of self, love others unselfishly and accept our existence as meaningful, despite its unmanageability. When we renounce our fear of life and give up trying to have it under our control -- that is, when we acknowledge our contingency and utter dependence on God -- then God comes to us and turns us toward Himself. Seen in this light, conversion means not only a turning away from one's past but entrusting oneself to the unexpected, uncharted way into the incalculable future in which God comes to us."

I want to continue my conversion by following the one true God, whom I can trust, into an unexpected, uncharted and incalculable future.