God's Wonderful Matters
A long time ago I dreamed of having my own website in which I could just write about the things I see that destroy people, things that maybe those people would look at and see for themselves and not be mixed up with those things anymore and find true joy and freedom and contentment. I planned to call it "The Pascalian Cynic," first for the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, an iconoclastic figure of the highest order; and secondly for the kind of person I see myself as: a cynic who so desires to see authentic expressions of the life that God made in each person. I find that I either rejoice in that expression or I withdraw because it pains me so to watch so many so willingly and often gleefully dance with death. In many ways I've been trained by good Catholicists not to say anything because, well of course, I'd be intolerant narrow-minded bigoted and all the rest of it.
So now there's the Internet. Joy! Here I can boldly lay out my case about what the World is really like and what it is really doing to draw people from that One source of genuine contentment. Yes, I confess, there is a measure of safety here. I do enjoy this-- writing in my modest webzine The Catholicist Nation and blogging here-- but I also know that this cannot be a fellowship community, that I must be with people, with them in physical proximity, worshipping Him in Spirit and in Truth. This is the vibrancy of the Acts 2 church. Sadly, I believe many consider the only way truth-telling communities can thrive, at least for now, is in cyberspace. While understandable in the sense that the church has been so corrupted by the World, we cannot settle for mere cyber-interaction. Jesus wants us to be His "flesh and bones," as Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians.
I've called this blog "Wonderful Matters" because my absolute favorite passage in the Bible is the entirety of Psalm 131. Here it is, it is rather short, but in it you may see why I've adopted the title.
"My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore."
It is phen0menally amazing to me that God has wonderful matters for us, most of which we don't even need to know about. In fact, I believe the first step to getting derailed and screeching headlong to one's destruction is to try to figure out things that one shouldn't be trying to figure out. Those engaging in such presumption take the place of God--it was the very first sin in the Garden! The critical wonderful matter here, however, is that one is with Him. Once we turn to Him and allow Him to do that with what is His, once we tell Him we'd like to do whatever it is He wants for us, once we enter into His family as His adoptive children and as such rejoice in being heirs of all that is His, He lets us in on an extraordinary breadth of understanding regarding that which matters.
The first thing, though, is to quietly, serenely walk with Him knowing He provides--just like the weaned child whose hope, whose life, is in Him.
As it is, that is too wonderful.
And it makes me all the more want to direct people to that wonder and beauty and grace as they trudge through a violently wretched World. By all means I don't know everything. That's exactly the point. All I need to do is "know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge" (also from Ephesians). I'm a cynic not so much because I hate the World, but because I see enough of how awesome the Kingdom is, how magnificent His care is, how profound His mercy is, and how stunningly people are convinced they're into wonderful matters without Him.
Look here for my take on why Jesus Christ is the source of anything that matters at all.
So now there's the Internet. Joy! Here I can boldly lay out my case about what the World is really like and what it is really doing to draw people from that One source of genuine contentment. Yes, I confess, there is a measure of safety here. I do enjoy this-- writing in my modest webzine The Catholicist Nation and blogging here-- but I also know that this cannot be a fellowship community, that I must be with people, with them in physical proximity, worshipping Him in Spirit and in Truth. This is the vibrancy of the Acts 2 church. Sadly, I believe many consider the only way truth-telling communities can thrive, at least for now, is in cyberspace. While understandable in the sense that the church has been so corrupted by the World, we cannot settle for mere cyber-interaction. Jesus wants us to be His "flesh and bones," as Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians.
I've called this blog "Wonderful Matters" because my absolute favorite passage in the Bible is the entirety of Psalm 131. Here it is, it is rather short, but in it you may see why I've adopted the title.
"My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore."
It is phen0menally amazing to me that God has wonderful matters for us, most of which we don't even need to know about. In fact, I believe the first step to getting derailed and screeching headlong to one's destruction is to try to figure out things that one shouldn't be trying to figure out. Those engaging in such presumption take the place of God--it was the very first sin in the Garden! The critical wonderful matter here, however, is that one is with Him. Once we turn to Him and allow Him to do that with what is His, once we tell Him we'd like to do whatever it is He wants for us, once we enter into His family as His adoptive children and as such rejoice in being heirs of all that is His, He lets us in on an extraordinary breadth of understanding regarding that which matters.
The first thing, though, is to quietly, serenely walk with Him knowing He provides--just like the weaned child whose hope, whose life, is in Him.
As it is, that is too wonderful.
And it makes me all the more want to direct people to that wonder and beauty and grace as they trudge through a violently wretched World. By all means I don't know everything. That's exactly the point. All I need to do is "know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge" (also from Ephesians). I'm a cynic not so much because I hate the World, but because I see enough of how awesome the Kingdom is, how magnificent His care is, how profound His mercy is, and how stunningly people are convinced they're into wonderful matters without Him.
Look here for my take on why Jesus Christ is the source of anything that matters at all.
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