day no. 17,427: conservative and progressive according to the Spirit

"Christmas, being a Christian institution, contains in itself already the two alternative actions toward society — the preservation of what is good in the past, the removal of what is bad in the present." — G.K. Chesterton,  The Illustrated London News (1923)

We honor our fathers and mothers best by testing all things and preserving the good and tossing the bad. We cull our culture for its high water marks and we correct the errors that have emerged. We love our pasts in general and we repent of our failures at present. There is good in the past we have not honored sufficiently enough and bad at the present we have not repented of. By the grace of God, we must do two things at the same time: remember the work of the Spirit already accomplished and reform by the Spirit that which needs to be sanctified.

1 Thessalonians 5:21

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

The Word of God proves things faithful or not. That which is faithful, we must hold on to with all of our might and that which is proven false, we must abandon as though our lives depended on it.

"Christmas does not honor the past simply because it is the past, but because it is the truth." — Ryan Whitaker Smith, Winter Fire

Christians must be conservative and progressive. We must conserve the works of the Spirit and we must make progress in the Spirit right here and now. We must fashion the future out of the best of the past and according to the vision of Christendom that is our future.

"We conserve the past in order to preserve the future." — Ryan Whitaker Smith, Winter Fire

Sanctification means keeping the gains of the past and advancing to the gains of the future. We must be like Christ, easy to please and impossible to satisfy. We must not settle for how far we've come, resting on the progress of the past, we must strive for that to which we have been called, never stopping until He returns or calls us home.