Christ formed

My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you...

For the past several weeks, I have been reflecting on the formation of Christ within us. The early mornings and late nights spent in the barn with the cows give a great deal of time to ponder the words of Paul. While we have heard plenty of teaching about who we are in Christ, very little is said about who Christ is within us. The formation of Christ within us transforms us.

Perhaps the key to the formation of Christ has to do with the "where of the formation". Until Christ is formed in you... in you...in you. It seems to me that most of what passes for Christianity has less to do with the inner person and more to do with external actions.

Several articles in the religion section of the local paper illustrate this. A headline proclaimed - Sharing one's faith is hard but essential. The article went on to promote an event where people could learn how to share their faith. Huh?? Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. In other words what is in the heart comes out in our words. The only way it can be difficult to share one's faith is if that faith is an external issue, divorced from the heart.

In a more recent article, the writer interviewed people who were involved with building and giving away small crosses that could be planted in a front yard where the could be seen. One gentleman stated that we have to let people know that we are Christians. Huh?? Putting a small white cross in my yard is how people will know I am a Christian?? The pear tree outside our house never has to make any kind of declarations about being a pear tree. It has to do nothing but be; be what it was created to be.

The formation of Christ is not an external event. One cannot go to a formation of Christ seminar and learn how to have Christ formed in us. The only thing we can do is to allow the formation process to occur.

I do know that it is a painful process, painful for us as well as for those close to us. Paul likened the formation of Christ in those at Galatia to the pain of childbirth for him. Perhaps the pain is one reason that we shy away from allowing the process to occur. We fear the fellowship of suffering with Jesus. We attempt to avoid pain at all cost. Yet it is only in the crucible that Christ becomes formed within us.