Absolutely

And the last thing I want to do is to come up with a seventh. If you will forgive me, what I intend to try to do is to use this blog as thinking space. What I write may (certainly will) be incomplete, unclear - more a succession of thoughts than an exposition. Some years ago, I was staying at Carberry Tower, and came across in the library a book called "Markings", by Dag Hammarskjold. I may regard that book as my inspiration.

I am doubly inspired, now, to have read in the related Wikipedia article that Hammarskjold's book talks about an "inner journey", because, coincidentally, Jim Packer has been using a similar phrase, the "inward journey", to describe the life that we live to God and ourselves, as opposed to the life we live to the world around us, and to other people, in the very passage of "Keep in Step with the Spirit" that I was reading as I ate my macaroni cheese and chips (comfort food, I know).

So much for the bread - where's the meat in the sandwich? Romans 3:21-31 is the crucial passage where Paul turns from his litany of human woes and failings to put forward God's answer. I would say that it isn't until the 5th chapter that, gloriously, we hear the trumpets resound, but here, in the 3rd chapter is, perhaps, the first statement of a theme which is to be developed further. The old way has failed. What was the old way? I suppose - obeying the law. I'm reminded of the young man who said to Jesus that he had faithfully kept all of the commandments, and yet Jesus observed that something was missing.

So what is the new way? Is it that we, finally, admit that we cannot do it ourselves? Do we arrive at a moment (like when an alcoholic hits bottom, and finally accepts that he has a problem) when we turn to God, and cry, "help"? Does it matter if we understand how God is able to help us? Isn't it more important that we simply realise that he wants to help us?

Thank God for this gift, his gift. No language can praise it enough!