At school I loved formulas… physics formulas predicted the way light or electricity always behaved… chemistry formulas went with mixing solids, liquids and gases… and mathematical formulas (OK – for the purists, it’s formulae!) …letters and numbers calculating shapes… algebraic formulae that appeared to bear no relation to the realities of life, but were always predictable and logical.
At church there were formulas… the four spiritual laws, the ABC of becoming a Christian. Repent of your sins + give your life to Jesus =… predictable formulas about Christian beliefs, behaviours, belonging. For every difficult question there’s an easy answer. x+y=z.
But people don’t fit into tidy categories; bad things happen to good people; life doesn’t follow a logical or predictable pattern or formula; the square on the hypotenuse plus copper sulphate solution equals a bag of chips; x+y= a frog.
Musing on my heroes of faith… Baptist Charles Spurgeon doesn’t equal Salvation Army’s William Booth. Billy Graham’s evangelism doesn’t equal Martin Luther King’s civil rights… I struggle to bring them together with a single simple formula.
Chris Llewellyn says: ‘The New Testament records Jesus as asking more than 300 questions. He was also the recipient of well over 150 questions in return. But he only directly answered three of them.’
He explains how Jesus asked different people to respond to him in different ways… ‘Go sin no more’, ‘Sell your possessions’, ‘Be born again’… No simple pattern or formula.
Looking round church on Sunday I couldn’t imagine a more diverse mixture. Some have been to church all of their lives, some have come from to faith recently from a life of addictions; some are sailing through life, others struggle to get through each day…
A single, simple formula to embrace all life-styles and faith-realities…?
I don’t regret for one moment the decision I made, as a child, to follow the Jesus path. What that means for me and those around me in the complexities of life I’m still working out.
malcolmsmusings.org 
Great ‘musing’, as usual, Malcolm – although the opening graphic will give me nightmares🤣
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Sorry about the nightmares, Lynn. Maybe we should arrange therapy, or perhaps I need to give you special lessons in the delights of mathematical formulae!
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Bit late for that, I think. Teachers at school suggested I didn’t take O-level maths as I wouldn’t pass it🤣 Couldn’t get my head around geometry and trigonometry! So, I took the ‘very useful for crosswords’ subject of Greek Literature in Translation!🙈
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I love formulas too, Malcolm. But you are right, life isn’t often tidied up in a single formula!
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Life would be so much more convenient, Wynne if we could live by formulas…. But I think that I’ve grown to appreciate life in general, and faith in particular, more since I eased away from the rigidity of rules and formulas.
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