Endlessly Knowable

 

This week we are playing with others whose love never lets us go ~ also known as our saints.  We are playing with ideas and feelings and sensations that are beyond words as what shapes us.  We are playing with the Presence of the Eternal who is as close as our next breath and as big as the galaxies we have yet to explore.  Four images of God that I learned in seminary were that God is “Holy Other” (Karl Barth) and God is “the Ground of our Being” (Paul Tillich).  God is also the Liberator of that which binds and confines us (James Cone) and God is the One who leads the singing in the wilderness of life (Delores Williams). 

Which one of those images sings and speaks to your heart and life?  Or maybe, all four do in specific ways to parts of who you are.  You might sense the vastness of God as night arrives at our doorway earlier and earlier.  You might sense the closeness of God in a hug from one of your saints.  You might sense God empowering you to find your voice in the face of what hurts and harms others or singing out to God’s goodness even in the face of difficulty. 

God is more than we could ever capture in words, but we continually try to name the unnamable, because God is endlessly knowable.  God is not some genie in a bottle we can confine and contain, God breaks and bursts forth in our lives and the lives of others too.  God forms us, hides within us, and within others, and within the tree outside your window and the squirrel that just scurried up that tree too.  God is within and more than our lives.  I realize I may be writing in circuitous circles right now…and I do appreciate you staying with me…but it is my prayer that we will ponder our relationship with God.  The mystics say that at the heart of faith is two questions, “Who are you, God…and who am I?”  Those two are connected and you cannot respond to one without the other.  May you and I dive deeply into the holy mystery of life with the One who is here and there; the One who comes to set us free to sing the song of life for all that is and will be.  Amen.