Just a Wednesday word on God.
In our reading for today (p 36-37) Nouwen asks us to look with him at an assertion: God exists.
He says, When we make that statement, all the distinctions between intellectual, emotional, affective, and spiritual understanding fall away and there is only one truth left to acclaim: God exists. ...when God exists all that is flows from him.
For people of faith the very existance of God is a given...or is it? I think these words of Nouwen's are shared in Lent because it's a good time to look at some basics. I encourage you to read his short passge again with an ear for how the words touch your own understanding of what it means to assert God exists.
In the first century, shortly after his founding of the church at Thessalonica, Paul visted Athens .
So what?
Well, while there he must have noticed all the images and symbols erected to the many pagan gods worshipped by the Greeks. Athens was famous for its profusion of religious images, including tributes to "unknown gods."
Paul seizes on this particular Greek concept of the identity of the gods, God-the-unknown, as a way into the mind and hearts of his broadest Gentile audience. He, like Nouwen, makes for them an assertion that God exists and he offers two phrases that serve us well this Lent.
First, he acknowledges that God is a mystery, yet he invites the Gentiles and us to accept, setting aside all idols, that the unknown God is the single living and true God. And then he describes, just as Nouwen does in his own words, the implications for us all that this unknown God exists.
This God he says is one in which we live and move and have our being.
These words, some of the most loved in the Christian language, deeply shape our understanding of what it means for us and our lives and loves to say that God exists.
God exists. ...when God exists, all that is flows from him.
Tim+
No comments:
Post a Comment