06/30/2020
By Pastor Vinnie Cappetta
2 Corinthians 4:16
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
My wife and I just celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I think they call it the silver anniversary. After reflection, I think the silver might have something to do with the color I see emerging in my hair. There is no escaping it…I am getting older. I am looking more and more like my father every day.
I guess that’s why this story by Lloyd John Ogilvie got my attention…
…I had a wonderful period of uninterrupted time with my mother. She is eighty-three years old. Mother had a new red dress made for the occasion, spent the morning at the hairdressers, cleaned the house, had the coffee on the stove, and was all ready for my arrival.
We sat and talked like we have not talked for years, and like we might never talk again. She got out some of the old scrapbooks and albums, and entrusted to me a photo that is now one of my most cherished possessions. It was a picture of my father when he was my age. Years before she had put it away to give it to me in such a moment. My eyes devoured the photo for marks of the heredity we shared. I trace the lines and contours of my father’s face now evident in my own…
Have you been looking for and detecting the inescapable marks of an emerging family likeness to your own heredity? Paul’s code name fruit, far from being archaic, is the flash of an eloquent symbol to remind us that all the graces and characteristics of God are to be modeled in the daily life and relationships of God’s children.
Are we doing it? Are we giving the world a symmetrical, authentic, fully-formed image of Christ? There is still time. Spiritual growth is not a matter of chronology alone. It’s a matter of spirit. Of heart. Of who you are to the next person you meet. In the next crisis your face. In the next moment you live. From Radiance of the Inner Splendor.
