by Tim Holler
Sunny Side Market was where I bought my football cards. Lincoln Street Elementary, just down the road and around the corner, is where I went to school. In the middle of the second grade, we moved from a small rural community to the booming metropolis of Red Bluff, California with its 8,000 people! This was 1966, and I was so scared on my first day at my new school, I ran back home and threw myself on the bed. “I don’t want to go to school!”
Of course Lincoln Street Elementary is not a school anymore, it’s some sort of administrative building. And Sunnyside Market doesn’t sell Football cards anymore. But driving through these streets in January of 2025, where I had grown up 60 years before, it felt like God was showing me a vision. I could almost see myself running through these streets, across this neighborhood; going somewhere - the city pool, a friend’s house, the A & W, who knows? I could sense God was watching me. Every step taken (and always running–I don’t think I walked anywhere!) was under the watchful gaze of my Heavenly Father.
At the time, I had no idea of God’s presence.
I was just living. I was just being. If I think deeply, I know I could unearth both celebrations and losses, fears and joys, excitement and sorrows. But that wasn’t the point of this experience. The point, I think, was that God was giving me a new awareness that He has been with me, watching me, growing me, forming me, for my whole life.
I’m not an accident. Nor am I just the product of nature and nurture. Nor am I strictly the outcome of my wilful choices.
I am who I am as an outgrowth of God’s Work in my soul.
This is what is termed Spiritual Formation. It’s a mysterious work of God in each of us. He doesn’t act in spite of, or contrary to, the above mentioned influences (nature, nurture, choices, etc.) but is not limited to them either. Why? Because God is a person. And as a person, he has the ability to move in our lives and influence us, woo us, develop us spiritually without violating(denying?) our human freedom. Hence, the Work is mysterious.
And God has been doing this out of his love for me my whole life!
I read in John 17:24 this morning, I am a gift from God the Father to God the Son! I never thought of myself as a gift before! Maybe this process of Spiritual Formation is how the Father wraps His present to His Son?