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“How can you believe,
since you look to one another for approval
and are not concerned
with the approval that comes from the one God?”
John 5

It’s easy to make the mistake of seeing life as a treadmill, day after day ups and downs, a movement through time from youth to old age, then death and beyond.

Too often if feels as if we are helplessly captive carried along by the momentum of all that is expected of us and demanded from us, and we risk falling into an existence mode, a daily rhythm of survival, enduring, coping and so the treadmill rolls on.

Such an existence is not a life.

Deep within our being, in our healthiest moments, we know that there must be more. Treadmilling through the days, the weeks, the months and the years is not enough.

In such a survival we may accept that God exists, and we might often call on God to intervene, to obey our requests like an on-call magician.

But this healthy niggling sense persists, the sense that there must be more, surely there is more.

The good news is that there is more. We were not created for an existence but for a life, an adventure both now and into eternity.

The problem is that most people are satisfied with the routine and the mundane, seeking nothing more than the cheap and fickle affirmation of the crowd mentality and unconcerned with the approval that comes from God.

What about the affirmation that God can and will give to those who are willing to enter the arena embracing life as an adventure of faith.

To extend the treadmill analogy a bit: imagine I have a treadmill in the spare room. If I use it, it will help to keep me fit, and I can even listen to music or talking books, perhaps watch movies while exercising, but not leaving the house.

The more healthy I become the more I will tire of indoor exercise reading about and watching the lives of others. If I have healthy desire, I will begin to yearn for the outdoors, the countryside, the hills, the ocean and the skies.

It is too easy to slip into religious practice as an adequate existence with the approval of other people. However this is not enough.

We are made to yearn and long, to hunger and ache, to beg even for the adventure of faith in relationship with Christ.

Nothing less can deliver the approval we seek.

“The true protagonist of history is the beggar:
Christ who begs for the human heart,
and the human heart that begs for Christ.” – 
Fr. Luigi Giussani,

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Take an initiative and initiate a cafe gathering, or join these gatherings:

Friday 15 March 2024  10.00am. Stumble Inn, 200 Mangorei Road, Merrilands, New Plymouth.  Joan

Monday 18 March 2024 10.00am (& every Monday). Moku Cafe. Bush Inn Centre, Waimairi Road,  Christchurch. Trish

Email me to add another: john@fff.org.nz

After your gathering send a sentence or two about the encounter.