Though our outward humanity is in decay, yet day by day we are inwardly renewed.
2 Corinthians 4.16

We can hardly avoid identifying the whole of ourselves with our present situation and the pattern of our preceding existence. When we look back dispassionately upon our past life, with all its vows and promises unfulfilled or broken, we remember with irony the familiar doxology, "As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be for ever. Amen." Must we always be falling into the pit of lust, gluttony or covetousness? Can we never stop repeating unsavoury gossip and making subtle mischief against our neighbours and even those whom we regard as colleagues and friends?

Jeremiah in one of his most passionate outbursts cries out:

The heart is the most deceitful of all things,
desperately sick; who can fathom it? (17.9)

Can the Nubian change his skin,
or the leopard his spots?
And you? Can you do good,
you who are schooled in evil? (13.23)

And yet, despite the constant recrimination of a conscience that refuses to be totally overridden by the current mode of mass deception which strives to justify the mean and shoddy and sneers at any ideal of perfection, there is an inner core, a spark in the centre of that conscience, that will never cease from driving us on to the goal of self-fulfilment. This is not to be equated with material success, which at its highest is transient as the shades of retirement and ageing cloud all human ambitions. Indeed, we can never in this life know whether we are truly fulfilled as people. But Jesus gives us the key in the Sermon on the Mount: "There must be no limit to your goodness, as your heavenly Father's goodness knows no bounds" (Matt. 5.48). The spark of the soul where the conscience finds its most radiant expression knows the measure of that goodness, and will never rest until that challenge of perfection has been met and its end attained.

When, at the ending of the day, we most bitterly bewail our shortcomings, feeling that we never seem to make any improvement and that there is no moral or spiritual soundness in us, there is a power within us whose origin is divine, working unceasingly to supplant the past inadequacies with a new vigour of enterprise and a greater sensitivity of purpose. This is the grace, the unmerited gift, of God working a slow change in our inner attitudes, so that, according to our own willingness to receive the gift of love, our old ways are slowly erased and a fresh perspective of existence shows itself in our lives. To be sure, we can do nothing of ourselves, but God working within us can replace what was immature and selfish with a character of deepening responsibility and caring for others. It is during the time of sleep, when we yield our being to the divine in trusting obedience and quiet content, that this slow renewal takes effect. Of course, in one respect the change is continuous, but in another it shows itself most impressively after the hush of sleep has obliterated the usual self-concern that can so easily interpose itself between the action of God and the benefit of the individual.

To regret an inadequate attitude of the past is to set in motion the decay of our outward humanity; to wait in humility for the action of God in the soul is the first step in our inward renewal. The regret cancels out our previous pride that will not accept God's grace; the humility is the foundation stone on which the new person is being fashioned. But then we have to play our part in substantiating the inward renewal to the point of creating a new person of a pattern shown us in the life of Jesus himself.

O Lord, may I cease to cling on to outworn attitudes of mind, and be always open to the thrust of your Spirit, guiding me into new paths of endeavour which heighten my awareness to the feelings and requirements of my fellow creatures.