Building a Mystery
(I really hate titleing something with a phrase or title from something else just because one word matches the theme but I did it anyways. HA HA HA! Hooray for inconsistency!)
So, it's really not my fault that I didn't post yesterday. Blogger was done for a long time and then I was busy in the afternoon and then I had to finish Brothers In Arms (finally beat it, started it in July! Few months of hiatus). So, then I decided it was time to read/write. Got the Bible out, realized I had a headache so I decided to lay down for a bit and close my eyes. Roll over, feel the Bible under my shoulders, open my eyes and, what!? It's 4:40 am. So, I'm posting now. And I did another post earlier. And I wrote long responses to everything you guys wrote for the last two days. That counts for something, right? No? Okay, fine. You're right :)
Read: Colossians 1-4
Gotta love those four chapter books! Gives me plenty of time to go through them multiple times which is nice. Getting to know the stuff pretty well. Anyways, I want to focus on 2:2-3: "I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God's great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we've been shown the mystery!" No doubt this is more than just a little bit influenced by Joel's Xanga post (traitor! ;) ). I have to admit a little bit of doubt in what Paul is saying here. I think I know quite a bit about God but I still don't have the "confident and at rest" mind that he descbribes.
Could it be? I'm overestimating my knowledge?!
Yeah, definitely. It really doesn't even seem possible that one could know so much about God that it could silence the fears and doubts that everyday life seems all too willing to provide. But even me, who has a hard time conceiving of any of the mystery of God can admit that God has to be bigger than that because I have seen these people who have this kind of rest and confidence. There's plenty to acknowledge, many of them in much more dire situations than me.
Going a little bit futher back in the book, we hear this: "As you learn more and more about how God works, you will learn how to do your work" (1:10). Hmm. I think this and the other verses indicate a certain importance for knowing how God works . . .
You know, I have no idea how long we'll be doing the dLog. But I hope that one day we all can look back at this and smile at our naivete at this point of our lives. How we made everything so much more complex than it had to be and how we had grasped the roots of important truths but hadn't yet figured out the whole thing. We're glorious works in progress and I'm very thankful for the chance to be worked on in company with you guys and all of our other faithful readers out there. Thank you :)
posted by Matt Wiggins @ 2:44 PM
3 Comments:
Amen Matt.
I had a funny thought (at least, to me) while reading:
To say that God is big would be to limit his actual capacity.
Maybe I'm tired.
Anyway, I'd like to think that we could someday collect the dLogs into a book: "The musings of the lost"
Yeah, I'm tired. G'nite.
i wonder how the complexity of culture has confused our minds. it seems that simple people are able to accept complicated things fairly easily. they just readily admit, "that's beyond me..." i, however, have been trained by the american mantra of "anything is within my reach". which is a load of crap. i suppose it's healthy to encourage oneself toward difficult ends, but it's not always realistic. but because i have this tatooed upon my mind, i approach God in the same way. "yes, you are large and in charge, but intellectual capacity is the ability to comprehend (and control) you." i never say it quite so bluntly, but i see this in my actions.
but thankfully i'm learning to not consider myself so learned. thank God that we are "glorious works in progress..."
Hmm, a book . . .
Good thinking, Ben. Now do some posting ;)
And Joel: I think that there's merit in both mindsets, it just takes a bit of wisdom to know when to accept which. There's plenty of times that things seemed nigh or even just plain impossible but a few foolhardy individuals decided not to take no for an answer and somehow succeeded. To quote Mal from Firefly: "We have done the impossible and that makes us mighty!"
(No, that didn't quite connect, but I like the quote and I don't mind plugging Firefly!)
The Bible, not to mention Jerry and the state of Ohio, tells us that, "Truly, with God, all things are possible," or "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." We may never actually figure out how the Trinity really works but is it really out of our realm should God want us to know? Or maybe just impossible on this plane of existence?
I don't really know. I see the merit of doing something really stupid that everyone says can't be done because you believe you can, but I can also definitely see that there are sometimes that, no matter how bad we might want something, it just ain't in the cards.
I do know positively that no one will answer this question though: Can Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that even he can't eat it?
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