I remember when Sasha, my daughter, was born. Just a few months ago, K, K’s mom, and I were headed home. We got a call from our attorney telling us that the birthmother, A, was at the hospital asking for us because she was in labor. As you can imagine, we rushed to the hospital. We finally got through all the red tape at the hospital and ended up in her room. We both stayed with her until the time for the surgery. We had been thinking of naming our daughter, K S, but after some precious moments with A, we changed her name to S K. The time came for her emergency C-section and they only would allow one of us back there with her, so K went with her, and I went and waited in the room S would be brought to. The anticipation was huge. My life was changing that night forever. All these thoughts of what kind of father I would be and other pressures of how to take of my daughter were also rushing through my mind. After S was born, the nurse came and found me and brought me to the nursery. When I saw my newborn daughter, I was overwhelmed by the goodness of it all. Sasha was the first baby I have ever held, and I could barely talk. This moment made me speechless, and it is still hard to describe it.
What I find fascinating is how many of us have had similar moments like these when we were overwhelmed with the presence of something or somebody so… and it is hard to find the words here, so good, so right, so safe, so true. Warmth, comfort, awe. We all have our own ways of trying to describe these moments.
What is it about certain things that ignite something within? And is that something actually Someone?
Whatever those things are that make you feel fully alive and like the universe is ultimately a good place and you are not alone, I need a faith that doesn’t deny these moments, but embraces them. I need a spiritual understand that celebrates these transcendent moments instead of avoiding them. They can’t be experiences that distract from “real” faith. They are expressions of what it means to live in God’s world.
Rob Bell has some friends ask him to do their wedding ceremony, but they didn’t want God, Jesus, Bible or religion to be talked about, but they wanted it spiritual. The bride told Rob to make it profound, deep, and spiritual. So they met on a cliff overlooking a lake in the midst of a thick forest. Rob asked them why they chose such a natural, organic setting, and they talked about the beauty, peacefulness, and the way they fell in love in that part of the state. The groom said, “Something holds all this together.” They decided that the same “something” that held it all together was the same “something” that brought them together and that their wedding day was part of something much bigger and decided to call this “something”, God.
Basically, these people intuitively believed certain things about the universe, and Rob just asked them questions that they already knew the answers to. The ancient rabbis and prophets had these same types of spiritual experiences.
Isaiah 6:3 – What did Isaiah have a vision of? What were the angels saying?
In Hebrew, the word for glory is kavod, which means weight or significance. To put what the angels were saying another way, “The earth is filled with the weight and significance of God”
Psalms 24:1 ; 139:7 – What is the earth drenched in?
God is not somewhere else. God is right here. It’s God’s world. God made it. God owns it. And God is present everywhere in it.
Genesis 28:16 – What did Jacob not realize?
I’ve heard people tell stories about something powerful the happened and at the end of the story, they say, “And then God showed up” as if He were somewhere else and decided to intervene, but God is always present. We are the ones who show up.
Romans 1:20 – What has been made that shows God’s invisible qualities?
The whole earth is full of the kavod of God. This truth is everywhere. It’s here, there; it’s all over. Not only is the truth everywhere, not only is the whole earth filled with the kavod of God, but the truth is available to everyone.
Romans 2:14 – What is it that the Gentiles are missing?
Gentiles are people who do not follow God, and law is Paul’s word for the Scriptures. So he says that people who don’t know anything about the God are able to do the right thing on a regular basis. With no instruction from God or the Bible, these people are able to live, from time to time, as God created.
Titus 1:12-13 ; Acts 17:28 – What is Paul saying about what these other people said?
Paul is quoting Cretan prophets and poets of Mars Hill, people who did not believe in God, and is using their statements and makes them about God. He doesn’t care who said it or who they were saying it about. What they said was true and Paul claims those truths.
In 1 Corinthians 3: 21 and 23, Pauls tells us that it all belongs to God, and Christ is God, and we are of Christ, so it all belongs to us. If it is true, if it is beautiful, if it is honorable, if it is right, then claim it, because these things are from God, and you belong to God.
As Christians, we are free to claim the good, the true, the holy wherever and whenever we find it. When we don’t have this knowledge that everything is ours to claim, if we only have room for truth of the Bible, if we only believe Christianity is the only thing that is true, when we come across truths that are outside of the Bible, such as, 1 + 1 = 2, we have a dilemma: intellectual honesty or Jesus? People experience truth in new ways everyday and they need a faith that is big enough to handle it. Otherwise, if faith has no room for more truth, the box gets blown apart.
In John 14:6, Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” If we come across truth, it is not outside our faith as a Christian, our faith just got bigger.It is not that truth is over here and Jesus is over there. Where we find one, we find the other. Jesus has freed us to embrace whatever is true and good and beautiful wherever we find it.
John 1: 1-3; 14 – What is the Word referring to?
Word in Greek is Logos, which is where we get our word for logic. Logic, intelligence, design. Blueprint of creation. When we speak of these concepts, what we are describing is the way the world is arranged. There is some sort of order under the chaos and some people have a better handle of it than others. When we say someone is intelligent, we are saying they have insight into how things are. Such as, an auditor knows how financial statements are arranged, but a car mechanic knows how a V8 is arranged. Both are intelligent and see how certain things are, and have a getter handle on those certain things than others.
Jesus is the Word, the Logic, the Intelligence. We follow someone that has supreme intelligences. He knows how all things are. He has insight into how the world really works and how it was created to work. We follow His teachings because they are how to live the way we were supposed to live. For Jesus, the point of religion is to help us connect with God.
Colossians 2:17 – What did Paul say about reality?
One of the first things God does in creating the world is separating the dark and the light, which also distinguishes between dark and light. The rest of the Scriptures is God teaching people how to distinguish between dark and light, teaching people to discern right and wrong, clean and unclean, true and false, dark and light. What brings death and what brings life.
As Christians, we don’t need to cut ourselves off from real life; we need to enter it more fully. It is a journey into the heart of how things really are.
Colossians 3:17 – What does Paul say about the stuff we do?
Everything we do, we need to do in the name of Jesus. Everything becomes sacred because we start recognizing God has always been there, here, everywhere. Moses took off his sandals because the ground was holy. How many times did he pass this place while herding his sheep? He was just so busy that he never was aware of the holiness of that place. The same things happen to us. We get caught into routines and just miss out on the kavod of God all around us.God doesn’t show up; we do; he is already here, all around us. Whatever is passionate, love, or exhilarating is from God. Wherever we find what makes us feels alive, our souls soar, our hearts good, our lives honorable, we find God.
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