Gobsmacked.

One of my favorite verbal acquisitions from my forays to Scotland.

What other word so well captures what should be our response to the unfathomable realities of life, the world, the universe, and God revealed “in a thousand forms to be found along every road” than “gobsmacked”? In Hebrew it’s captured by David’s Mah enosh? in Psalm 8. “When I consider your heavens, the work of your hands…what is man that you are mindful of him?” Earth origins is another area of much domino playing by scientists and theologians alike, to be sure, but when all has been said that we can possibly say as we pry into the details of origins and the universe, we are still left as God believers with the simple affirmation of Hebrews 11:4

By faith we understand that the universe (literally the aeons) were created by God’s command so that what is seen wasn’t made from what is visible.

Yeah. That about covers it.

And I’m gobsmacked.

Peter Enns is too. If you aren’t familiar with Peter Enns, you might find it worth your while to check out his blog (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns) if you can handle one scholarly type’s perspective on the nature of Scripture and faith.

Loved his most recent post: Thinking About God Makes Me Just Want to Keep My Mouth Shut.

Enjoy. Or not. If you go to the post, the comments are fun too.

Smart people tell us that the universe is about 14 billion years old and about 46 billion light years across. Light travels about 5.87 trillion miles a year (you heard me). Multiply that by 46 billion. My calculator broke. I came up with 2.70231100992E23. According to my extensive 10 second Google research, the numbers before the E are to be multiplied by 10 to the 23rd power. I think this is what God laughing at us looks like.

It also seems that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate. And if that weren’t enough, now we are told there may be more than one of them.

Add to this the fact that there are billions upon billions of galaxies in our universe, each containing billions upon billions of stars. We cannot remotely comprehend these numbers. I also hear from reliable sources that stars within galaxies are millions, billions, trillions (what does it matter, really) of light years away from each other, and similar distances exist between the galaxies themselves.

If there is a God….a higher power, a supreme being, who is behind all this, I feel we should just stop talking for a minute and…well…just stop talking for a minute.

What kind of a God is this, who is capable of these sorts of things? What claim can we have to speak for him, to think his thoughts are our thoughts? Who do we think we are, anyway?

Here’s another thing that unsettles me into silence. According to the Christian tradition, this God who does literally incomprehensible things, is also willing to get very small – to line up next to us, to know us, even love us (as the Bible says again and again).

If there really is a God like this–a God who understands and controls things so big my calculator has to use a letter to get it across, who is also a God who walked among a tiny tribe of ancient people called Israelites, who allowed them to write about him in their tiny ancient ways, and who subjected himself to suffering and death (what we work so hard to avoid), well…

I think we’re talking mystery here, people.

A God who does both. There are no words for this sort of thing. Yeah, King David in the Psalms talked about praising God because of the wonders of the heavens (Ps 19), and wondered out loud how a God who put the moon and stars in their place could be bothered by puny people (Psalm 8). But David had a limited, quaint, view of “up there.” He did not, and could not, think of “heavens” as we now have to, what with our telescopes and such.

One God responsible for the unfathomably large, who is also near us. If there is such a God….

To take this all in, as far as I am concerned, is above our mortal pay grade. Those of us who believe this kind of God exists should feel put in our place, pretty much walking around with that “I can’t believe what I just saw” look in our eye.

The Bible calls this humility and awe, which, as hard as it is to pull off, is at least something we can understand.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/09/thinking-about-god-makes-me-just-want-to-keep-my-mouth-shut/

 

breathless awe

This morning I gathered with about fifteen members of a family for a graveside service on a hillside. The memorial was for a 96 year old grandfather for whom one of the key attributes shared by all was his gentleness. He was a gentle man, married to one woman for over seventy years. A gentle man who produced three sons who in turn were gentle men.

And spread out below us was a vast field of tall grass which, in the lack of any human musical accompaniment at the brief service, became a divine instrument of sorts on which the Father played his own tribute. There was no sound, except that of the gentle wind coursing through that tall grass. Like waves. Had I seen this before? I couldn’t say. But I stood spellbound by it. Amber waves of grass. Waves cascading, careening, caressing – wonder-full harmonious collisions forming patterns vanishing even as they appeared.

I felt like I could stand all day just watching, absorbing, basking, praising, thanking.

My friend and mentor David Roper shared this in his most recent “e-musing” – which just happened to be waiting for me in my inbox when I got back to my study:

Worship is the only adequate response to beauty when we behold it, for creation’s glory is a reflection of the glory of God. “Glory” suggests an epiphany (a shining out or a manifestation) of God and is, or so I believe, the biblical word, for “beauty.” Theologian Herman Bavinek said as much: “For the beauty of the Lord, scripture has a special word: glory.” God’s beauty is the penetrating light that shines out through all creation.

The word, “translucence” comes to mind. It suggests the capacity of all creation to take on something of God’s beauty and allow that beauty to “pass through” to our eyes. Our task, in turn is to grow eyes that look not merely at, but through the object to the beauty that lies beyond it and to think, “How beautiful must be He who made this beautiful thing?”

Thus, our response to beauty, when we behold it, should be worship, adoration, and thanksgiving—for the radiance of a corn flower, the splendor of a morning sunrise, the symmetry of one particular tree—for all nature declares the ineffable beauty of the One who made it.

C. S. Lewis was walking with a friend as they talked about worship and gratitude. Lewis wanted to know how to generate a thankful heart toward God, and asked, “Should we summon up all we know about God and his greatness?” His friend turned to a brook nearby (it was a very hot day) and splashed his face and hands in a little waterfall and said, “Why not begin with this?”

Today it was the beauty of amber waves of grass.

And I realized as I contemplated a gentle life well-lived for 96 years, much of it in wilderness, that the key to such deepening gentleness is found and nurtured in allowing ourselves to be so captivated by such moments, such sublime epiphanies of beauty.

I find myself driven too much by fear and foreboding, dominated by angst and acidic anger, brimming too much with bile and bitterness, gall and impatience? But today I heard his invitation yet again, not to escape in denial from the injustices and demands and pressing needs all about, but to see them differently through a heart reshaped and nurtured by beauty dripping from his palate quite literally everywhere.

On my patio surrounded by green grass and fruit trees. In the crisp morning air. In my grandson’s smile, my grand daughter’s giggle and her sparkling eyes.

Or today in amber waves of grass.

Why not begin with these?