A Posture in a Sacred Place

I have truly struggled with how to respond to the discipline of confession this past week.  After reading the chapter days ago, I have been attempting to decide what I wanted to post and share.  The reason I have been struggling with how to respond through a blog post is because the majority of the chapter pierced my heart so deeply and challenged me on such an intimate level that I am still only beginning to process and comprehend the truths stated in the chapter. 

"We do not have to make God willing to forgive.  In fact, it is God who is working to make us willing to seek his forgiveness." (153)  In the past 6 months I have been learning what forgiveness looks like.  As the coarse of my life has been shifting and molding into different and unexpected turns I have been abruptly faced with decisions and events in my past that have placed the concept of forgiveness on the forefront of my time spent with Jesus.  To say "the haunting sorrows and hurts of the past have not been healed" (147) would be only an introductory statement into what I have been discovering.  I have spent an obscene amount of time in St. Alphonsus Liguori's 3 necessary requirements of confession (examination of conscience, sorrow, and a determination to avoid sin).  I will admit the majority of my time has been overwhelmed with sorrow. I believe glorious days in these past months have been wholly consumed by allowing myself the freedom to be "sorrowful in the emotions without a godly sorrow." (152)  Even after spending time in this statement I still struggle with how to wrap my noggin around it.  However, Foster's words (as Pearly mention earlier) have truly given me a shove in the direction of the cross.  "Confession begins in sorrow, but it ends in joy.  There is celebration in the forgiveness of sins because it results in a genuinely changed life." (153) "Honestly leads to confession, and confession leads to change." (157)  "Freedom begets freedom." (150) 

As for the practice of confession this week, I have begun the baby steps.  I will say with confidence and honest joy the process is well underway and yet has so much more to go.  "The bible views salvation as both an event and a process." (145)  As I baby step toward confession and the life altering freedom offered by Christ's sacrificial death as the lamb on the cross for me, I am reminded of Staff Culture Point #7,

"If you are tired and disenchanted you are in a very sacred place.  Christ is pushing you to eat from the tree of life.  He's leading you to the cross.  He's building you up in love.  He's helping you discover that your relationship with Him is not cream puff ideas of how to have a better day but instead an intense love affair that demands your body, heart, mind, and strength."

So in this sacred place full of sorrow contemplating confession and forgiveness I think of the practice of the discipline of confession simply as a posture.  Assuming the posture of falling face first, arms outstretched offering myself at the foot of the cross.  My body dirtied by the dust, blood, fluid, and words of the crowd as God in the flesh washes me white as snow as the Creator of the Universe romances me from the cross.  Returning back to chapter 1, "The disciplines allow us to place ourselves before God so that he can transform us." (7)

Continue to break my legs God.  Romance me to the foot of the cross where I may begin to understand the unconditional, inconceivable love you have for me.  Give me strength to continue to fall to my knees placing myself at your will so that you may transform my heart.  Amen.