Tuesday, April 28, 2009

A Spiritual Experience

Every spring I read the eight Anne of Green Gables books. They follow her from childhood on to when her children are grown and fighting in World War I. (I will not tolerate the movies as they change the time period in an unacceptable way.) I think each spring Anne reminds me more of how to be a gracious, godly person than all the time I spend in church during the year. This time, a passage of Anne's thought when her childhood friend, Ruby, dies stuck with me:
"She was leaving everything she cared for. She had laid up her treasures on earth only; she had lived solely for the little things of life - the things that pass - forgetting the great things that go onward into eternity...
"The little things in life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth."

I first encountered this concept (of living as though in the Kingdom while still on earth) in college, in books that had been recently published, and thought it was so novel. L. M. Montgomery was theologically ahead of her time. And so much more poetic.

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