"Christ... Lives in Me."

I ask for the grace to pray and meditate faithfully.  I ask for patience, tolerance, compassion, and empathy.  I ask to abstain from anger, anxiety, compulsive behaviour, discouragement, and self-importance.  I ask to know and follow Jesus more intimately, seeking justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly.


Galatians 2:19-21
¹⁹For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; ²⁰and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ²¹I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.


1) "...live to God;" "...crucified with Christ;" "...Christ... lives in me;" "...live by faith;" "...who loved me and gave himself for me;" "...if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing;" "


2) Am I convinced that "if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing"?  Does Christ need to be the only means of salvation for his life, death, and resurrection to be worth something?  I'm not at all convinced.  Certainly, if the law worked for me, I would earn my own salvation, but I've tried that (over and over and over...).  I am more than reasonably confident that I cannot earn my salvation via the law, or my own works.  I cannot even pray without intervention.  I sit down daily to meditate, to focus on nothing except being in the sacred presence, and within seconds, I fail.  I get distracted.  I fall asleep.  I daydream.  After seconds, minutes, sometimes most of my session, I return to the sacred presence - briefly.  How often does my alarm wake me up or return me from my daydream?  My own efforts do prepare the soil, create space.  But it is only by the grace of God that something like peace comes to me even for the brief moments I experience it.  I can't and won't speak for anyone else.  I don't know if Christ HAD to die for my salvation; but I am convinced that he did; in fact, many have and do.  Christ dies again and again in a world bent on alienation, self-interest, compulsion, and denial. 


3) What is the invitation in all this?  To consciously, regularly, faithfully, return to "live to God."  To invite Christ to live in me.  That would really be a different way of living, as if Christ were living in me and I were not just living out my own ego/false self.


"Live in me, breath of God.  May I not - too often - be a cause for your perennial death."


Breathprayer: "Christ... lives in me."