The Word we study has to be the Word we pray. My personal experience of the relentless tenderness of God came not from exegetes, theologians, and spiritual writers, but from sitting still in the presence of the living Word and beseeching Him to help me understand with my head and heart His written Word. Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of knowing Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.
~Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel
Oh beloved, it is true. The depth of the gospel is unfathomable. Time and galaxies and universes are but an expression of Creative Ability. He, The Triune Weaver of all Good, has put together a stage of multiple dimensions upon which we should go through our lives.
He then wove our true substance into a vessel of clay, that is so exquisitely built that it runs on nearly any fuel. When it bleeds it knows how to stop. When the environment changes, the vessel makes multitudinous adjustments to keep everything going.
Quite frankly beloved, creation and its crown jewel (us) are so incredible as to be forever beyond the reach of the clay that we are, to fully understand how it works. Even simply pronouncing the name of one of the main connecting proteins in the body (Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl…isoleucine) takes over THREE HOURS to pronounce. Just one connecting tool in the clay vessel is so complex as to destroy the idea of us coming together by chance…. Just one protein.
Why the complexity?
This is what we do with the primitive technologies we clatter together in our “high-tech” industries. We think and think and build and experiment and build and sell – and try again. All of this complexity is built into a system to SIMPLIFY and improve the experience for the user.
We cobble together, but G_d created us. And He wove in the most incredible complexities to our environment and our bodies that we might be free to live as we were actually Designed. We have been freed from anything other than thankful stewardship of our world and our bodies that we might use all this complexity as a platform for one simple (and impossible) task.
To Love Him and others as He has Loved us.
That’s it. There is absolutely nothing else to life.
Nothing.
And the way that we do this is so so so so very simple too. We look back at the Creator and simply get to know Him. He will be known (and He already knows us completely). And once we catch a glimpse, we realize that we will never know the depths and the enormity and grandeur and power and majesty and strength and Love of Who He Is.
But…
Can we see it? We do begin to see something else. The little bit that we do know is all of Him. The simplicity of G_d is the whole point of the Gospel. Everything of Who He Is, is right here with us – and in us – that we would succeed at the simplest (and most impossible) of tasks; to Love others and build goodness into their lives.
Our lives are actually so simple that we allow the vessel He has created to become the very dwelling place of the Ferocious and Intimate Love Who started it all. Each little bit we know of His Word and Life in us – and allow to work through us – is absolutely enough for the moment. And from each simple moment, we launch forth into our purpose: to Love Him and others with everything we have right then and right there.
So yes, the “tech” behind the universe is astounding. The weaving of matter and energy and force and time and gravity and information are beyond comprehension. But the tech has a reason. It has set us free to live as we were built to live. Just Loving the Creator back, and allowing that same Love to pour out on others.
The strength of a man is not in comprehending more information or philosophy or politics. The strength in life is in allowing the Weaver to do His work, that we might be free to do ours. Tonight is your night beloved. Time to unravel a bit.
