By Stephen Gaukroger, Founder of Clarion Trust I have a confession to make: for a long time, I was incredibly jealous of people with dramatic testimonies. Growing up in the 1960s and 70s, I was constantly surrounded by powerful stories of people coming to Christ out of backgrounds of addiction, prison sentences, or radical lifestyle […]
Bees work away in their hives building their wax to store honey on ‘man-made super frames’ which are regular pre-shaped slats. They are diligent workers conforming to a pattern – here is a picture of Christians living ‘under the Law’ which you read of in Romans 7. However, taking away these imposed structures gives them freedom to create their own shapes for honey combs which led to this beautiful work of art by a bee colony. This could represent a Romans 8-style ‘Life in the Spirit’ – wonderful, strong, purposeful and shaped by the Spirit to the glory of God. If your Christian life was represented by a honey comb, would it be a free-form thing of beauty or conformed to a rigid pattern?! Have you understood the difference?
