Even though I do it for a living, I've always thought . . .
Even though I do it for a living, I’ve always thought that
talking about God is one of the most challenging things we are called to
do. In the first place, we are limited
by our perspective. Our trying to
describe God is like a fish trying to describe water. How can we adequately, or even meaningfully,
describe the One who constantly surrounds us, and supports us, and makes our
very existence possible?
In the second place, we are limited by our
understanding. How can we speak
intelligently about the One who will always remain mysterious, transcendent,
and beyond our comprehension? We cannot
fully understand God any more than a clay jar can discern the personality of
the potter who fashioned it.
But if you ask me, perhaps the biggest hurdle, when it comes
to talking about God, is that all we really have are words—and words will
forever fall short of truly capturing the majesty of the Almighty. Still, words can help to point us in the
right direction. For example, if there
is one thing that we can say about God with absolute certainty, it is that the
Creator wants to have a relationship with us.
We hear this word in the story of Adam and Eve when the Lord
comes looking for them. We hear it in
the covenant with Abraham when God promises descendants as numerous as the
stars. We hear it when the children of
Israel are mercifully led out of Egypt.
We hear in the Psalms and from the prophets. And obviously, we hear it most clearly in the
person of Jesus Christ.
The problem is that, while God has continued to speak of
this desire for a relationship with us, we haven’t always been in the mood to
listen. Jesus ended many of his parables
with the phrase, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” But we sometimes have trouble with that, don’t
we? When God speaks, a lot of us become
selective listeners. We hear what we
want to and tune out the rest.
Which may be why toward the end of his life, Jesus spoke
very few words. He was practically
silent when he stood before Caiaphas.
His answers to Pontius Pilate were brief and to the point. And on the cross, he spoke only seven times.
Some have suggested that he was trying to conserve his breath,
since crucifixion is technically death by suffocation. But I have always thought that, after
centuries of speaking words to us, God decided to demonstrate how much we are
loved through action. After all,
Christ’s willingness to die for us made a statement louder and more persuasive than
anything he could have possibly said!
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