Blog # 25 A SLEEPING GENIUS

BLOG # 21 A SLEEPING GENIUS What happens when a genius falls asleep? I imagine certain scientists have already tackled that question and if we were to investigate their research there would be a theory or two as to what the answer might be. But for the ordinary person like myself, when the genius falls asleep he or she is very much like the rest of us. A similar question might be asked about other people than a genius. What happens to a brother sister daughter son or friend when asleep or otherwise are not conscious or thinking about their identity as brother sister daughter son or friend? In some ways they would be the same as someone else who is not related in this or that definite particular way. In a sense we are what we think we are. Applying this kind of reasoning to our identity as a Christian believer we are led to conclude the we are really and most fully a Christian believer when we are actually thinking about ourselves in that capacity, when we are actually conscious of our Christian identity. It isn't that our faith is taken away or destroyed during those times when we are not consciously aware of it no more than the quality of being a genius is destoyed when the genius is asleep, but it is not active and personal to me until I am aware of it. These thoughts came to me when I was readng the letter to the Romans, the thirteenth chapter, particularly verse eleven. "It is now the hour for you to wake from sleep, for our salvation is closer than when we first accepted the faith." To "wake up" as a Christian would seem to mean we are to claim our identity in Jesus in a conscious and personal way. As a sleeper we are still numbered among the billions of men and women alive humanly in the world around us. As awake in Christ we are different, called yet free to claim God as our Father, to give sublime meaning and value to any and all suffering, to transform death itself into an expression of the deepest trust and most perfect love.(Jn 15:13). The joys of faith are real and many for those who are "awake"!