By Guest Contributor Sharon Toews

What does it mean to experience “the renewal of your mind.” Typically I have thought of this in terms of purification or beginning to desire the things of God instead of the things of this world. I believe these are both common and valid interpretations, but I feel like I understood a fresh aspect of this verse today.

Our minds naturally function according to the rationality of this world and tangible reality. But we are exhorted: “Do not be conformed to this world,” or, as noted in my Bible as another possible translation, “to this age.” We are called not to be conformed to this world, this age, this blip of finiteness suspended amidst an unfathomable eternity beyond the confines of time and space and our feeble understanding of “reality.”

When we accept Christ, we are set free from previous worldly notions of what is possible, realistic, and logical. Indeed our whole being is being renewed and reoriented, and yet there is