Archive for the ‘theology’ Category
The World Is Too Much
John 20:26 NRSV
“Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them…”
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The world is too much.
Not only in its weight, though it is heavy.
In its insistence. Its density. Its claim to be all that there is.
What can be seen, measured, named—this is what we learn to trust.
This is what presses in on us.
This is what fills the room.
And so we live inside it.
Easter does not remove us from the world.
It does something more unsettling.
It asks whether what we have taken to be the whole of reality
is, in fact, only what we can perceive.
He stood among them.
The doors were locked.
Nothing had changed that could be pointed to.
The room remained what it was.
And still, he was there.
Not outside the world.
Not beyond it.
Within it—without being contained by it.
They did not recognize him immediately.
Not because he was absent.
Because what they were looking at
was still being interpreted by a world that had not yet made room
for what had happened.
I know that condition.
It is not that presence is nowhere to be found.
It is that the world, as I have learned to perceive it,
leaves little space for anything that does not behave
as presence used to behave.
I do not fail to perceive because nothing is there.
I fail because too much else is.
Too much that insists on finality.
Too much that closes the case.
Too much that declares what can and cannot remain.
And yet—
I cannot say that absence is complete.
Something resists that conclusion.
Not consistently. Not in a way I can prove.
But enough that I cannot live as though what is gone
is all that is real.
To live inside resurrection is not to see clearly.
It is to discover that what I see
is no longer the measure of what is.
The world is too much.
And still, it is not all there is.
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Prayer
God, loosen the hold of what I can see, so that I may not miss what is already present.
Unless I Touch
John 20:27 NRSV
“Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”
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Thomas is not there the first time.
He misses the moment the others describe—the presence, the voice, the showing of hands. By the time he hears it, it has already become testimony. Something reported. Something he is expected to accept.
He does not.
Unless I see… unless I touch…
It sounds like doubt.
It is something else.
Thomas refuses to say more than he can sustain as true. He will not borrow certainty from someone else’s experience. If this is real, it must be real in a way he can trust.
I understand that instinct.
I cannot insist that I feel her presence. It does not come when I ask for it. It does not remain when I try to hold it. Most mornings, I weep if I do not distract myself. That is what I can say with certainty.
And still, I cannot say she is gone.
Absence does not behave cleanly. It does not remain contained. Something in my experience resists that conclusion. Not enough to prove. Not enough to name. Enough that I cannot call it absence.
So I do not say that I know.
I say that I hold.
Thomas stands in a different place.
He will not hold what he has not encountered. He will not say that something is real until it meets him in a way he can trust.
And Jesus does not refuse him.
He does not correct him. He does not shame him for asking. He offers what Thomas requires.
Reach out your hand.
Touch.
The wounds remain.
Not erased. Not explained. Still present in the body that stands before him.
And Thomas answers.
My Lord and my God.
We often hear what comes next as a correction.
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.
But it may not be a rebuke.
It may be a description.
There are those who encounter and those who are asked to live without that kind of certainty. Those who are given something they can touch, and those who must remain inside something they cannot hold.
I find myself there.
Not seeing.
Not touching.
Not able to insist.
And yet, unable to say that nothing remains.
To live inside resurrection is not to feel presence consistently, or to prove it.
It is to discover that absence is no longer a sufficient explanation.
Thomas needed to touch in order to trust.
I am learning to trust what I cannot touch—and to admit how difficult that is.
God meets him in what he needs.
God meets me in what I cannot hold.
I do not yet know how both can be true.
But I will not reduce either one.
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Prayer
God, meet me in what I can touch and in what I cannot, and give me the courage to remain without resolving either.
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Finding Our Route
How did the tree get lost in the woods?
He couldn’t find his route.
We may not be trees, but we spend a lot of time searching for a way forward. Sometimes the best choice is simply to pick a direction and start moving. Other times, when we’re truly lost, the wiser course is to stop, sit down, and take stock.
That’s the trouble with life: for almost every situation, there’s more than one plausible answer. Knowledge alone doesn’t always point the way. We need wisdom.
But what is wisdom? I believe it grows out of knowledge and experience together. Yet sometimes it comes as more than the sum of those parts. Sometimes Providence stirs the pot, and God lays a finger in the pudding. And when He does, a path we never imagined clears before us—one that leads not to despair, but to surprising and blessed results.
Let All the Earth Keep Silence…
“Speak only if it improves the silence.” Courtesy of Chantelle Says
A friend perished tonight; I want to say ‘faded’. She faded from view. Or maybe I want to say, “she passed”, as they say in the part of Georgia where I came to know a bit more of God than I bargained for. No, just faded. Faded like the sun sinking below the horizon only to rise like the sun from another. Fading out, fading in. Setting and rising; borrowed images that, tonight, belong to others. They make me want to pray.
In her short book, “Help, Thanks, Wow”, Anne Lamott declares that prayer should be simple. I agree, but I want to add, it can still be beautiful. The question is, in whose eyes should such beauty be held? Is it possible to perceive beauty most properly when our hearts are tuned to a pitch heard only in darkest nights, or greatest joys, or deepest yearnings; a beauty encountered in the midst of mystery? Is it probable that what often passes for beauty is noisy and as likely to carry prayers ‘aloft’ as a blossom might drift into the sky borne on the backs of gilded bricks? I need more than bricks tonight.
I want to pray. I want to let a stream of yearning flow from my heart to Another’s. Sometimes words of any kind get in the way of prayer. Of all the prayers I have uttered or heard the most profound was the extended silence that followed when Dr. Raymond H. Bailey halted, mid sermon. He had just declared that we should remain silent that God might speak; the following silence provoked hope in some, joy in others, and (perhaps) surprise. In silence we held our breath and our words. We listened and our hearts found the pitch; we simply and silently prayed. What could be more beautiful?
A friend perished tonight. Her family must surely struggle to find something lost in the shambles; in the midst of their grief I pray.
“But the LORD is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.”
– Habakkuk 4:20 KJV
Life in Light
Sun shines over my shoulder. Cascades of light and warmth spill across me and to the north I see long shadows of myself on the floor.
I cannot look into the light but I know of Light’s embrace. I cannot see God but I accept that God is near all the same.
On a whim... 