“What then is the way to holiness? It is a narrow way and leads through a strait gate, but we cannot with justice complain that it is difficult either to trace or to follow. Many other and harder ways have been tried. On the banks of the Ganges or on the pilgrim route to Mecca you will find men and women seeking after holiness with an unexampled concentration of purpose. They lay upon themselves heavy burdens and grievous to be bourne, and if such were asked of us, we might well feel daunted. But Jesus Christ says, ‘My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ He lays upon us no other burden than of putting our whole trust in Him–no difficult self-immolation, no exaggerated austerities, no excesses of ascetic practice. He wants us to be kind and just and true in all our little dealings of daily life, but even that He does not expect of us in our own strength. Moreover, these things are not so much the way of holiness as the fruit of it: Holiness is commitment to the service of God in Christ, but we must be careful not to understand the wrong way round. It is not on the basis of our obedience that we are enrolled in Christ’s service, but rather it is on the basis of our enrollment that we obey. The first thing is to be sure that we are definitely enrolled, definitely committed to Him for time and for eternity; and then perhaps we can say with St. Paul, who never hesitated to number himself among the saints, though he was humble enough to describe himself as the very least of them all: ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.'”
John Baillie, Christian Devotion. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962, pages 29-30.
Photo by GAC; detail from stained glass, North Presbyterian Church, Elmira, NY.
Gary Chorpenning's Notebooks 