Returning to Wesley

With all the negative stuff which has been floating in the air among Methodists in recent years, there have been many on both sides of the controversy who claim the true insight into what John Wesley was preaching and teaching back in the 18th century.  Everyone on both sides of the theological chaos suddenly has become an authority on Wesley.  In such discussions it is easy to assume that the one posing as an expert really is an expert when he or she is doing little more than reporting what someone else has said.  In such times is is good to go the source which is not what our neighbor is saying, but what Wesley actually said.  

While doing some reading in a book entitled "A Wesleyan Spiritual Reader" by Rueben P. Job, some words of Wesley showed up on the page.  "I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow in the air.  I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God:  Just hovering over the great gulf; until, a few moments hence, I am no more seen:  I drop into an unchangeable eternity!  I want to know one thing--the way to heaven, how to land safely on that happy shore...For this end He came from heaven.  He hath written it down in a book.  O give me that book!  At any price, give me the book of God!  I have it: Here is knowledge enough for me.   Let me be homo unius libri."  Wesley was indeed a man of one book which speaks of the foundation for his personal faith and his practice of that faith.  

The Wesleyan tradition is one built upon the foundation of the Word of God.  It is a tradition which boldly declares it to be one of its foundational stones.  This quote from Wesley also points us to a theology that is practical in that it has as one of its goals the bringing us into the eternal presence of Christ.  Wesley would tell us that our days here on earth are finite and fragile, but that even as we came from God, returning to Him is a part of our spiritual heritage.  Here for awhile, but in heaven for eternity is a message today's Wesleyans need to once again hear preached from its pulpits.