"Great is the mystery"
1 Timothy 3:16
At its heart, Christianity is all about matters, which, even when they are plain before our eyes, remain so profound, they actually remain, at least to us, unexplained. Such realities seek to tell us that however hard we look, there are secrets at the heart of existence which we barely comprehend - marvels that are meant to lead us to a place of awe. As creatures intended to truly acknowledge and revel in such splendour, once perceived, we can then use our gifts and lives to magnify the profound nature of such truths.
The Apostle Paul certainly knew the height and depth of this in his own life. In his writings, he speaks of several of the deepest mysteries which surround and encompass all things. To mention a few -
The mystery of God's work of Redemption (Romans)
The mystery of Life (Resurrection) after death (Corinthians)
The mystery of God's goodness triumphing in a realm scarred by evil (Ephesians)
The mystery of Christ's incarnation (1 Timothy)
Underpinning all of these, is the mystery of the nature of God Himself (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) and the manner this is expressed to creation in love, especially in Jesus Christ.
When we begin to reflect on the nature of such mystery in the manner Paul encourages us to do, we quickly move from our lack of comprehension to a position of sheer wonder, which no doubt will become the essential character of all actions and culture in the renewed creation.
To some people, talking about 'mystery' as an ultimate reality seems nonsensical... Life is all about 'sensible' things that we can define and measure and predict, but is it? How much of what you and I will do today which we consider 'natural' is actually predictable - do you really know what will occur in the next few minutes? - and how much larger does that ignorance become when we seek to open the essential nature of reality itself and peek inside? Looking hard at such things can be very sobering indeed!
What Christianity teaches is that through the days of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and on to the nativity itself, God has been at work amongst the nations of humanity to express and convey the profound 'weight' of the mystery we are engaged with, and when we stand in silence and contemplate it's greatness, we can no longer escape its pull or the richness of its embrace. Like one consumed, body and soul, in the passion of a lover, the tide of this everlasting ocean will have us, ravish us, in life, death, and resurrection. It is a truth, a love, that envelopes everyone and everything, which never ceases to call, to desire, to overwhelm, so may our twisted, broken lives not fear or hate such a calling, but become consumed by the deepest beauty.
God points us to the 'fixed point' of Jesus Christ to evidence the revelation of the wonder at the heart of all things. If we truly comprehend the mystery that He unlocks, all of life will be rich indeed.
Saturday, 17 September 2011
Sunday, 7 August 2011
The Overwhelming
"It's not on it's way.... it's already here".Twister
London last night.
Back on October 15th, 1987, around 10.30 at night, the United Kingdom was struck by the most powerful storm the country had witnessed in over three hundred years. With winds averaging 110 mph, a force four times greater than that of a hurricane, the country found itself ravaged and its landscape totally changed, a billion pounds worth of damage in just a few hours.
The extraordinary thing about this entire event is no one saw it coming - the weathermen were clueless - the event only became real as it rushed upon the country - total, uncontrollable power.
I recall the next morning. We had escaped lightly at home with a few broken windows and lost roof tiles, but there was carnage everywhere, and when I visited the local woods the next day, I could not believe my eyes. Entire areas of ancient woodland had been uprooted from its place within the earth and thrown around like kindling. The air was heavy with the smell of sap from hundreds of acres of broken trees. I recently visited those same woods again - the old pleasant open broad leaf glades are gone, never to be replaced. Fifteen million trees were lost across Southern England that night (90% of forests), and London was shrouded in black as major power facilities were wrenched from the national grid, and every major road was blocked.
The storm, I felt, was a warning, an omen of change.
I recall a vivid nightmare I had in the weeks following that event - standing on a beach before a rising wave, hundreds of feet high, rushing forward.
London was ablaze last night, not because of a natural occurrence, but due to rioting, violence and looting on her streets. Politicians speak, like the weathermen of 87, as if it was unexpected, but the storm is truly upon us. The economies of the Western world are in disarray, and the consequences are evident - for the very first time in my life, I see a wave of uncontrollable power rising, and our leaders have no possible means to avoid or control the changes which are coming. Like that night of the great storm, we are close to truly being overwhelmed.
It is at moments like this that my thoughts turn to Psalm 46, rightly known as the song of the Reformation. There is indeed only one help in such times of need, only one who, whether in life or in death, can truly be our refuge and our strength.
I listen to the radio now and hear the storm rising. Only He is able, once more, to say "Peace, be still". Let us hope that such a moment comes soon.
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Outside of us...
"Consider the lilies of the field - they neither toil or spin, yet Solomon, in all of his glory, was not arrayed as these". Jesus.
I am not, in any way, shape, or form, a gardener, and yet, once every year, I get a very special pleasure from my property....
Along the front of my house are arranged five large pots, each one housing an azalea plant. I do very little for these residents - I've re-potted them once in the six years I've been here, and occasionally watered them if it's been especially dry - that's it, and yet, every Spring, these amazing plants burst into a splendid display of colour which equals anything coaxed and nurtured by many a patient gardener on my estate. For around the next six weeks, the locals can often be heard making comments on the beauty of the display, and then, for the next twelve months, the Azalea rests, looking a very plain and ordinary plant, and the front of my home goes back to being pretty much ignored.
I recently realised there's a real lesson here. God is a far better gardener - a furnisher of life - than I could ever be, and when He adorns something, it is truly beautiful. Now I'm not for one minute wanting to in any way put down those who truly enjoy gardening as a way of discovering that truth, any more than I would negate the joy for an artist who encounters true moments of inspiration, but creation is truly His work, not just when it comes to my pot plants, but even more when it comes to our redemption.
Much of the time, it probably appears to ourselves and others that not a great deal is going on - we go through our daily routines, seeking to move forward in the faith, but not really aware of much happening, because like with so many things, the real work goes on at a deep level, behind closed doors as it were, until the right time comes for something to be made evident. What really matters here is confidence in the work not of our hands, but of God's.
Jesus knew just how easy it was for us to concern ourselves with all manner of issues that can bury us beneath our anxiety. Imagine what results a gardener would achieve if he spent most of his time pulling plants out of the soil to check if there'd been any change! Worry, not only about earthly things, but often about spiritual matters as well, can amount to our doing something equally as foolish, because there is only one place of true comfort and surety, and that is within the grip of His amazing grace. Here, He grants us a rest, for the burden of being His is far easier than the strife and turmoil which any other "process' proscribes.
Take a look at the beauty that surrounds us, and consider these things...
Saturday, 4 June 2011
Light in the Shadowlands...
"It is perfectly easy to go on through all of your life giving 'explanations' to everything - religion, love, ethics, friendship - without ever having truly been inside any of them. You continue to define something without knowing what it actually is. That is why so much contemporary 'thought' amounts to nothing... you are busily constructing your conclusions in a place without any light".
C S Lewis.
Yesterday was the first true day of summer here - one of those long, bright, warm days, which I sadly had to spend in an office. The forecast was for more to come, so just after 5am this morning, I grabbed my camera to set off into the countryside of the nearby river valley.
After a brisk morning walk, I found I had arrived too early. The sun had yet to rise high enough to paint the area, so rather than being surrounded by the mornings radiance, I walked to my initial destination in conditions that felt somewhat sullen, like an overcast day. It made me keenly aware of what I had come to encounter, and just how impoverished the morning appeared without that morning light.
The return walk could not have been more different. The sun had risen through the trees, and the river and woodland were aglow with the splendor of warm, adorning gold, making everywhere become marked with the glory of a fresh morning. I quickly found myself revelling in the beauty, ambling along to soak in as much as I could with my eyes of this truly enriching moment that speaks so deeply of the goodness of what has been made.
How much of life is defined for us by those two conditions?
We can live in a world in which there is indeed much beauty and grace, but we really do not see it because the light is not defining, not penetrating our vision - the deep, darkest recesses of our minds and hearts. When that manner of light truly fills us, then nothing remains the same - our entire view and vision is totally transformed.
Jesus spoke of Himself as the light of the world, for when we truly comprehend who He is, then the 'darkness' of all smaller definitions of what is actually taking place cannot but vanish in such brightness. The problem is that religion (via, legalism, dualism and other follies) and the 'normal' (fallen) darkness of the human mind so often seeks to put a screen in the way so we cannot encounter the true brilliance of that light - the wonder and marvel of God's grace, astonishingly and totally giving love - in our world, but continue to live, like some stunted caricature of a person, in the darker realms, denying, we think, that such a full and beautiful thing could be there. Thankfully, all too often, the light finds a way through the cracks, and once a glint of the true is glanced, it becomes hard in the extreme (unless we want nothing else) to scurry back into the dark.
The beauty of the morning was a wonder to behold today, and certainly made rising so early totally worthwhile. The invitation to each of us is to step forward and truly encounter the light of God's work in Jesus Christ. If we can do that, then no morning, no day, no experience, no moment, can ever be the same, because the light found there will always vanquish the dark, and that, we know, is what really counts.
C S Lewis.
Yesterday was the first true day of summer here - one of those long, bright, warm days, which I sadly had to spend in an office. The forecast was for more to come, so just after 5am this morning, I grabbed my camera to set off into the countryside of the nearby river valley.
After a brisk morning walk, I found I had arrived too early. The sun had yet to rise high enough to paint the area, so rather than being surrounded by the mornings radiance, I walked to my initial destination in conditions that felt somewhat sullen, like an overcast day. It made me keenly aware of what I had come to encounter, and just how impoverished the morning appeared without that morning light.
The return walk could not have been more different. The sun had risen through the trees, and the river and woodland were aglow with the splendor of warm, adorning gold, making everywhere become marked with the glory of a fresh morning. I quickly found myself revelling in the beauty, ambling along to soak in as much as I could with my eyes of this truly enriching moment that speaks so deeply of the goodness of what has been made.
How much of life is defined for us by those two conditions?
We can live in a world in which there is indeed much beauty and grace, but we really do not see it because the light is not defining, not penetrating our vision - the deep, darkest recesses of our minds and hearts. When that manner of light truly fills us, then nothing remains the same - our entire view and vision is totally transformed.
Jesus spoke of Himself as the light of the world, for when we truly comprehend who He is, then the 'darkness' of all smaller definitions of what is actually taking place cannot but vanish in such brightness. The problem is that religion (via, legalism, dualism and other follies) and the 'normal' (fallen) darkness of the human mind so often seeks to put a screen in the way so we cannot encounter the true brilliance of that light - the wonder and marvel of God's grace, astonishingly and totally giving love - in our world, but continue to live, like some stunted caricature of a person, in the darker realms, denying, we think, that such a full and beautiful thing could be there. Thankfully, all too often, the light finds a way through the cracks, and once a glint of the true is glanced, it becomes hard in the extreme (unless we want nothing else) to scurry back into the dark.
The beauty of the morning was a wonder to behold today, and certainly made rising so early totally worthwhile. The invitation to each of us is to step forward and truly encounter the light of God's work in Jesus Christ. If we can do that, then no morning, no day, no experience, no moment, can ever be the same, because the light found there will always vanquish the dark, and that, we know, is what really counts.
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
You can run, but....
The t-shirt really said it all...
"live now, pay later".
I guess that's the trade-off some think makes sense, but it's never really that easy. Most of us find (and usually a lot sooner than we expect) that the 'live' part of that equation quickly becomes 'complicated' by all kinds of more immediate effects. It's often now the young rather than the old who are finding their bodies are shutting down because of the sheer amount of 'living' (abuse) they are indulging, and that tells you something major about the bitter sting at the core of what is seen as living without limits.
The reality is that 'going for it' is just a way to try and drown out the cry from within - the need for something truly satisfying. We can look at ourselves, at others, at the world around us, and all of it resonates - booms - at us that there's something truly amazing going on here. The fibres of our flesh, our breath, our soul, tell us we were made for more than just existing in the malady of brief moments of touching true beauty, surrounded by the squalor of pain and dislocation. Why are we this way - why are you and I such a paradox?
The 'pay later' statement gives us a cue to the answer. Death overshadows our current existence because this life is scarred by our divorce from eternity. We are a fallen race, a species broken and ruined by our rebellion and corruption - hence we wallow in the transient. The great need we all have is for rescue, for liberation from the perilous trading of instant gratification before eternal death.
There is a call to each of us to truly be made free - to know the chains of our current futility broken forever, but only if we truly know we're dead men walking - that the answer lies outside of ourselves.
God sent Jesus Christ into the world not to condemn us for our rejection of Him, but to save us from the eternal darkness of cutting ourselves off from His care. He came to truly give us life that will rescue us from the horror of our empty 'living'.
There is much, much more than the broken folly of our ways without God.
It's time to stop the so-called 'living', the mindless running, and come home.
"live now, pay later".
I guess that's the trade-off some think makes sense, but it's never really that easy. Most of us find (and usually a lot sooner than we expect) that the 'live' part of that equation quickly becomes 'complicated' by all kinds of more immediate effects. It's often now the young rather than the old who are finding their bodies are shutting down because of the sheer amount of 'living' (abuse) they are indulging, and that tells you something major about the bitter sting at the core of what is seen as living without limits.
The reality is that 'going for it' is just a way to try and drown out the cry from within - the need for something truly satisfying. We can look at ourselves, at others, at the world around us, and all of it resonates - booms - at us that there's something truly amazing going on here. The fibres of our flesh, our breath, our soul, tell us we were made for more than just existing in the malady of brief moments of touching true beauty, surrounded by the squalor of pain and dislocation. Why are we this way - why are you and I such a paradox?
The 'pay later' statement gives us a cue to the answer. Death overshadows our current existence because this life is scarred by our divorce from eternity. We are a fallen race, a species broken and ruined by our rebellion and corruption - hence we wallow in the transient. The great need we all have is for rescue, for liberation from the perilous trading of instant gratification before eternal death.
There is a call to each of us to truly be made free - to know the chains of our current futility broken forever, but only if we truly know we're dead men walking - that the answer lies outside of ourselves.
God sent Jesus Christ into the world not to condemn us for our rejection of Him, but to save us from the eternal darkness of cutting ourselves off from His care. He came to truly give us life that will rescue us from the horror of our empty 'living'.
There is much, much more than the broken folly of our ways without God.
It's time to stop the so-called 'living', the mindless running, and come home.
Monday, 25 April 2011
A Second Look
"Here, the person looks at themselves differently...as belonging to part of a history, which, whilst narrowly defined by call, covenant and promise, spills out into the wider horizon of the world's marvelous creation and redemption. The 'true' person is always defined in relation to this all-encompassing whole".
Jurgen Moltmann.
It's one of the most satisfying moments for an artist,
when, in my case, a subject looks at an image you have taken of them, and they are genuinely changed in that moment by what they see. They look at themselves differently and, hopefully, they actually 'grow', gaining confidence or confirmation about some choice or quality of themselves (perhaps just the choice to get some photos taken) as a result. It can be a truly special moment to share - I've seen it totally impact upon how some people then chose to engage with and use their creativity and how they have gained so much by so doing.
It is often those 'narrow' moments of such definition that lead us into far larger places of totally fresh engagement. This is splendidly expressed in the recent film, The Warrior's Way, where a small, almost insignificant 'encounter' with a cherry blossom petal totally changes the central character's view of his purpose, and sets him on a course where he will truly learn about love and life in an entirely fresh way.
So often, it seems, that the real issue is our actually encountering such moments, especially when it comes to the more spiritual aspects of our existence.
Jesus spoke of how our inclination is to so often go with the flow, to allow life to almost wash over us as we revel in the apparent freedom of 'broad' living -
broad experience, broad opinion, broad satisfaction, but there's a price-tag attached we can all broadly choose to ignore - the destruction of ourselves.
I've come across cases where photography has been used to make people face up to a often harsh and sometimes brutal reality about themselves, because only when such bruising has transpired can true healing begin.
There is, sadly, an ugliness within us that has to be faced, from which we all have to be rescued, but it's by passing through the narrow place, that moment of our ending, as it were, that we come into the realm of truly living, of losing what we could not hope to hold (or actually profit from) so we gain what we can never loose - life by knowing the maker and sustainer of all that is good and will be renewed in the day of His true revealing.
Like someone seeing themselves afresh for the first time, there is a much deeper, richer life for each of us, bought and paid for in the love of God, revealed in Jesus Christ. It begins with soberly facing some realities. It ends with those realities being made anew - forever.
Time to really see what is there.
Jurgen Moltmann.
It's one of the most satisfying moments for an artist,
when, in my case, a subject looks at an image you have taken of them, and they are genuinely changed in that moment by what they see. They look at themselves differently and, hopefully, they actually 'grow', gaining confidence or confirmation about some choice or quality of themselves (perhaps just the choice to get some photos taken) as a result. It can be a truly special moment to share - I've seen it totally impact upon how some people then chose to engage with and use their creativity and how they have gained so much by so doing.
It is often those 'narrow' moments of such definition that lead us into far larger places of totally fresh engagement. This is splendidly expressed in the recent film, The Warrior's Way, where a small, almost insignificant 'encounter' with a cherry blossom petal totally changes the central character's view of his purpose, and sets him on a course where he will truly learn about love and life in an entirely fresh way.
So often, it seems, that the real issue is our actually encountering such moments, especially when it comes to the more spiritual aspects of our existence.
Jesus spoke of how our inclination is to so often go with the flow, to allow life to almost wash over us as we revel in the apparent freedom of 'broad' living -
broad experience, broad opinion, broad satisfaction, but there's a price-tag attached we can all broadly choose to ignore - the destruction of ourselves.
I've come across cases where photography has been used to make people face up to a often harsh and sometimes brutal reality about themselves, because only when such bruising has transpired can true healing begin.
There is, sadly, an ugliness within us that has to be faced, from which we all have to be rescued, but it's by passing through the narrow place, that moment of our ending, as it were, that we come into the realm of truly living, of losing what we could not hope to hold (or actually profit from) so we gain what we can never loose - life by knowing the maker and sustainer of all that is good and will be renewed in the day of His true revealing.
Like someone seeing themselves afresh for the first time, there is a much deeper, richer life for each of us, bought and paid for in the love of God, revealed in Jesus Christ. It begins with soberly facing some realities. It ends with those realities being made anew - forever.
Time to really see what is there.
Saturday, 26 March 2011
"jedism"
"I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer".
Sam - The Two Towers.
I have a good friend who is, to put it mildly, an avid Star Wars fan. He even goes 'trooping' (full Storm-trooper gear) with like-minded folks to raise money for good causes, but none of that bothers me - it's all good fun, and it's all just part of his wider passion for good Science Fiction and meaningful stories in general.
I've watched (the original) Star Wars trilogy of movies several times, and I clearly recall the impact of the opening of 'A New Hope' when I saw this for the first time on the big screen in London in 1977. George Lucas clearly set out to make a mark (as well as a small fortune in franchising), and much of this is due to the employment of 'monomyth' with the classic hero/quest tales of the family of characters employed in the unfolding of the Skywalker story. Many engaging fictional adventures source from that particular stream, and certainly, there are things we can all both enjoy and reflect upon about the nature of existence by viewing such material.
My particular favorite movie was 'The Empire Strikes Back', which provides some truly chilling moments regarding the nature of evil and it's impact upon us.
All of this then, is reasonable, so long as we place such material within the realm of story-telling with the purpose of entertainment that certainly makes us think.
Back in 2001, just over 390,000 people in the UK stated 'Jedi' as their religious view on their census form. There is currently a campaign asking these people to state they have 'no religion' this time around to bolster the secular return for 2011, but something new has come to the fore - an actual religion of Jedism.
I guess I should have not been surprised to find that there is now a 'church', a 'temple', a religious society and a general organization for this idea. It is also not surprising to discover what lies at the heart of this phenomenon - a belief in the 'force' - an intelligent (?) form of energy responsible for life and the universe, which pervades all things and enlightens us to be good, kind, respectful, etc - pretty much the way you'd find in several Eastern and some Gnostic belief systems. Things, then, are just 'there', including evil, so we just have to do our best with it all and hopefully improve ourselves and life in general along the way.
Why?
If there is actually no better ultimate reality than Thermodynamics reducing the universe to a constant state of entropy and decay, why would what you, me, and humanity in its entirety matter a hill of beans before the great forces of futility and decay? Why, in fact, bother "believing" in anything - why not follow the philosophy of someone like Alister Crowley, who taught 'whatever you think to be good, you should do...that is the whole law"?
The frustration, collapse, pain, coldness of life and the universe we inhabit is all to real to adopt a 'just so' philosophy to it all. Like the force in Star Wars, it's something which not only surrounds and penetrates us, but so often originates from within us, however caring and noble our best intentions may be. Evil is real, and Christianity teaches that there are clear, historical reasons why such malignancy has corrupted the created order and benighted our brief time here before we succumb to the consequences of such darkness and die.
We have not actually been left in a world deafened and blinded to our true origins and purpose.
The Apostle Paul tells us that when we begin to see 'with better eyes', that creation argues with us regarding the presence and reality of our Creator, but we willfully bury that sermon and prefer to listen to beliefs of our own devising which allow us to furnish our own poverty in our self-assertion. What is even more shocking is that the God who is there has not merely spoken 'from a distance' regarding the truth of our origins and our rebellion, but has actually come amongst us and spoken to the world face to face in the person of Jesus Christ, and yet, like so many of the philosophers Paul addressed in Athens, we still hobble back to our philosophical hovels, to content ourselves with myths rather than substance of what really matters.
Yes, we can enjoy all the fun of good movies, social activities that express our delight in such fun, and both think and converse deeply about the ramifications that moments from such entertainments place before us, but faith must spring from the deepest source of all, and that - in its most healthy and genuine form - does not reside in some abstract force or our crippled souls, but in the one who truly loves us enough to come and deliver us in our time of greatest need. Not only is that the greatest story ever told, it's the most important, because it is true.
Sam - The Two Towers.
I have a good friend who is, to put it mildly, an avid Star Wars fan. He even goes 'trooping' (full Storm-trooper gear) with like-minded folks to raise money for good causes, but none of that bothers me - it's all good fun, and it's all just part of his wider passion for good Science Fiction and meaningful stories in general.
I've watched (the original) Star Wars trilogy of movies several times, and I clearly recall the impact of the opening of 'A New Hope' when I saw this for the first time on the big screen in London in 1977. George Lucas clearly set out to make a mark (as well as a small fortune in franchising), and much of this is due to the employment of 'monomyth' with the classic hero/quest tales of the family of characters employed in the unfolding of the Skywalker story. Many engaging fictional adventures source from that particular stream, and certainly, there are things we can all both enjoy and reflect upon about the nature of existence by viewing such material.
My particular favorite movie was 'The Empire Strikes Back', which provides some truly chilling moments regarding the nature of evil and it's impact upon us.
All of this then, is reasonable, so long as we place such material within the realm of story-telling with the purpose of entertainment that certainly makes us think.
Back in 2001, just over 390,000 people in the UK stated 'Jedi' as their religious view on their census form. There is currently a campaign asking these people to state they have 'no religion' this time around to bolster the secular return for 2011, but something new has come to the fore - an actual religion of Jedism.
I guess I should have not been surprised to find that there is now a 'church', a 'temple', a religious society and a general organization for this idea. It is also not surprising to discover what lies at the heart of this phenomenon - a belief in the 'force' - an intelligent (?) form of energy responsible for life and the universe, which pervades all things and enlightens us to be good, kind, respectful, etc - pretty much the way you'd find in several Eastern and some Gnostic belief systems. Things, then, are just 'there', including evil, so we just have to do our best with it all and hopefully improve ourselves and life in general along the way.
Why?
If there is actually no better ultimate reality than Thermodynamics reducing the universe to a constant state of entropy and decay, why would what you, me, and humanity in its entirety matter a hill of beans before the great forces of futility and decay? Why, in fact, bother "believing" in anything - why not follow the philosophy of someone like Alister Crowley, who taught 'whatever you think to be good, you should do...that is the whole law"?
The frustration, collapse, pain, coldness of life and the universe we inhabit is all to real to adopt a 'just so' philosophy to it all. Like the force in Star Wars, it's something which not only surrounds and penetrates us, but so often originates from within us, however caring and noble our best intentions may be. Evil is real, and Christianity teaches that there are clear, historical reasons why such malignancy has corrupted the created order and benighted our brief time here before we succumb to the consequences of such darkness and die.
We have not actually been left in a world deafened and blinded to our true origins and purpose.
The Apostle Paul tells us that when we begin to see 'with better eyes', that creation argues with us regarding the presence and reality of our Creator, but we willfully bury that sermon and prefer to listen to beliefs of our own devising which allow us to furnish our own poverty in our self-assertion. What is even more shocking is that the God who is there has not merely spoken 'from a distance' regarding the truth of our origins and our rebellion, but has actually come amongst us and spoken to the world face to face in the person of Jesus Christ, and yet, like so many of the philosophers Paul addressed in Athens, we still hobble back to our philosophical hovels, to content ourselves with myths rather than substance of what really matters.
Yes, we can enjoy all the fun of good movies, social activities that express our delight in such fun, and both think and converse deeply about the ramifications that moments from such entertainments place before us, but faith must spring from the deepest source of all, and that - in its most healthy and genuine form - does not reside in some abstract force or our crippled souls, but in the one who truly loves us enough to come and deliver us in our time of greatest need. Not only is that the greatest story ever told, it's the most important, because it is true.
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