Day 21 of Lent - Thoughts on Pantheism, Mystery, and Asparagus

There’s nothing common about you. There is a great mystery at work behind the events of your everyday life. There’s invisible threads stitched through your soul, fastening you to divine purpose.

This thread is not a suture; it is no mere baste-stitch. Your original design is not in need of repair, and this tethering of your design to the person of Christ is no temporary fix.

It also does not mean that you become God or God becomes you - because that would be a farce and a mockery of the eternal intent that lies behind the conception of you. If you become so absorbed into God as to “become energy” in a “friendly universe”, there is no YOU left for the Living God to walk and talk with.

This is a case of the clear-cut mystery of you, as you, in a meaningful, highly consequential relationship with God, as God.

Humanism is reductionist and boring at first, and then it gets ominous and frightening. Look around at the general condition of humanity, if you doubt me.

Pantheism blends God and creation to the point that both lose their distinctiveness.

Deism separates God and creation to the point that there is no essential connection.

So let’s go back to the mystery. In Christ Jesus, the Triune God has forever safeguarded your genuine participation in the warmest, wittiest, wisest circle of fellowship that has ever been and ever will be. Everything good and noble about you exists because of Jesus; all the affections of your unique soul, the creativity, the personality, all of it is preserved…and cherished. Without the God-man, you as “you” would be forever excluded from the plans of God.

That scarlet thread of redemption is why I love my life so much. It is why I love grilled asparagus, Wendell Berry, Snicker’s bars, and abstract art (the scribblier the better). That thread tethering me to Christ is why I have green eyes, why I am left-handed, why I read too much and laugh too loud. Christ experienced life as a human being, forever sanctifying my human experience. He left His place in glory to walk in sandals, grill fish over an open flame, forgive sinners, and weep with His friends.

Far from being abstract, these thoughts charm the living daylights out of me, and insert themselves into my ordinary day, changing it for the better and the sweeter.

Day 19 of Lent - in which Sheila runs out of words...

“My heart is composing a goodly matter; I speak of the verses which I have made concerning the King; my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.”

~Psalm 45:1

…this is me, in my think-tank…

It’s a crisp sunny Sunday, and I’ve overcome overwhelming odds to be here sipping coffee at the keyboard. You’ve overcome overwhelming odds, too, I want you to know. I don’t believe in chance. You’ve been brought here today, as have I.

On the way to church, I kept thinking about the fact that God has not been what has been against us.

He is for you.

He didn’t create humans reluctantly. God made because of who He is, and from who He is (a Being with unparalleled goodness, and overflowing creativity and insatiable desire to make). He was never a disinterested Maker. The Godhead were not without sheer bias towards us from the very beginning.

The generosity of Father, Son, and Spirit towards us did not flow out of some beige, tepid, half-hearted inclination. They weren’t sitting in heaven, amongst all that boring glory, and suddenly choosing to kick the cosmic can around, and so “here we are”.

No! There was an enemy, there was a Godhead, there was a story to be told, and the stakes were high. All the goodness of God made you and I, knowing we would need a costly redemption; and for that redemption to be real, there would have to be a designated Representative.

God knew that God Himself would become one of us. And His wholehearted goodness towards you was in it from before the beginning.

We do spend our life “as a tale that is told”. We’ve been included in the story God is telling, and that story is not one of a dying Christ “fixing” what an angry God hated about what He had made. Nor is the story one of an indistinct, all-inclusive “Fatherhood of God for a brotherhood of man”. Rather, the story is that of a dying Christ reclaiming our original design. He bought back the possibility of an affectionate relationship with us. It is the ongoing story of His creation, incomparably dear to Him from our first breath, all of nature as an object of delight, plunging itself into desperate ruin, and a relentless Living God who would not, and will not, allow His purpose for which He made us, to be denied.

His purpose (that we be with Him as beloved ones) caused Him to roar a lion-like “NO” to the very thought of our alienation from Him. Even though that alienation was by our own choosing. When we were faithless, He remained faithful.

And, can I tell you, there wasn’t a speck of hesitancy. The collective-yet-singular heart of God was never at odds with our original design. Far from it. He always knew that Genesis 1 would be a passionate rescue mission.

Let me tell you how that makes me feel. Let me tell you what it does for my heart to understand that any displeasure of the Godhead was aimed at all that would separate me from Him - that my original design, because of Christ, is still intact.

Well, I pretty much can’t. I start to run out of words.

But I keep trying. And you (hundreds of you!) keep reading.

Yay for blogs.

More coffee, please.