Thickness

Have you ever had the sensation of looking at a word and being struck by its oddness?  You spell it, and it doesn't sound right and it doesn't look right, even though you have spelled it correctly.  It is like you are seeing for the first time and it strikes you as weird.  (Try meditating for ten seconds on the word "thing" by just staring at it.  If you don't just flow over it like you would when you are reading normally, it starts to look out of place, weird.)

Have you ever done this with your own face?  You think, I could have looked any number of ways, but I happen to look this way.  How odd.  This might be more likely to happen to someone like me than to someone who pays a lot of attention to what they look like daily.  I pretty much get dressed in the dark and stumble to school...  I mean, first of all, human beings are such strange animals anyway.  And then you turn out to be you, specifically you, no one else.  Of all the faces you could have had, you have yours. 

I probably sound high, but I am grasping for language to describe a fleeting feeling.  You can't bottle or keep this feeling.  It's a little like deja vu, but you stop feeling deja vu once you settle your attention on it.  Like when you stop to dissect your joy or your peace, you lessen those feelings.

I had this feeling about my wife the other day.  I started to write her a love poem.  I put a picture of her in my mind.  And I had an odd feeling like she was unfamiliar.  Not that I suddenly forgot all about her or that I had been neglecting her or anything bad like that.  Just that I subconsciously transported back to high school, before college and everything, and I saw her - in a manner - for the first time.  Of all the people that I might have ended up with, I ended up with her.   Specifically.  And that feeling that I sometimes have about my own face, I had about my wife.  And just as I turned to examine that feeling, it went away because, like I said, this sort of thing is fleeting. 

It is like walking up to the edge of what might possibly have been different, being struck by the strangeness of how things actually are, and feeling a little light-headed next to the cliff of possibility, and that reality has been threaded to be what it actually is.  Dude, what if I had a different face?  It could've happened.  What if "thing" were spelled differently?  Could've happened.  What if I had chosen to go to Covenant College instead of Georgia Tech and never met Nicole?  That could have happened.

These pieces are like pointers to a bigger question I sometimes have.  Creation itself.  What if there were nothing?  What if history had never gotten started?  What if the universe were not here?  Imagine a great gulf of nothingness.  Sit on that for a minute.  And then let reality with its waterfalls, poems, pavement, babies, sunsets, holidays, insects, and thunderstorms come storming back into that gulf, the thickness of reality pressing its way back in. 

All of this stuff didn't have to be here.  None of this is necessary.  But it is here.  I didn't have to exist.  There was a time when I didn't exist.  But I do now.  So what will I do with that?  What a huge cliff of thought to step up to.

My moments of doubting are sometimes like this.  My mind might wonder, what if God didn't exist?  I see before me the cliff, and this doubt pushing me into that antithesis of a great gulf of nothingness, and the thickness of reality pressing into the gulf of nothingness. 

I don't think I could ever be an atheist.  I know that sometimes I live like one.  I mean that sometimes my sin shows that I am ignoring the reality of God.  But I don't think I could ever believe the proposition "God doesn't exist."  I think this because I have a relationship with him, for one thing.  But in those times when I have neglected that relationship, when I have shut my ears, when I am ignoring him, the thickness of reality still pulls me back from the cliff.

God is sovereign.  I have faith, but I believe that even my faith is a gift from God.  I cannot boast about coming to him because I am smart, humble, especially repentant, or perceptive.  I believe that in his grace he breathed life into me.  And I believe that with the love in which he saved me, he is also keeping me.  I think the thing that pulls me back from the cliff of unbelief when my dark heart leads me astray is his gentle, loving Hand.  His hand has woven the thickness of created reality, and it testifies so powerfully to his goodness within my heart.  I cannot ignore or escape it.

I do not keep myself a Christian.  God does. 

What a weird post.  You probably should shut off your computer and read about ten for fifteen chapters of Scripture to flush all this craziness out of your mind.

Seek

God said to the Israelites through Amos in Chapter 5, “Seek Me and live”, “Seek the Lord and live”, “Seek good and not evil, that you may live”. This was spoken to people who were bringing sacrifices, offerings, and having solemn assemblies; a “religious” people by outward appearance.

However, God looks deeper than our actions into the motives of our hearts and what we love and truly “seek”. God called them to repentance for hearts that were callous or indifferent to the weaker or downcast people in society, their Israelite brothers and sisters. They had placed their trust in themselves, their perceived relationship with God, their worship “style”, and their material “strongholds”. 

They had become fixated on enjoying life to the spiritual exclusion of the Giver of life! In Chapter 6, God pronounces “woe” on those that are “at ease in Zion”, those that “lie on beds of ivory” and “stretch themselves out on their couches”, that crave a rich diet, that sing “idle” songs that sound beautiful to the natural ear, that enjoy wine to excess by the “bowl”, and that enjoy the pleasures of being anointed with oils.

What they did not have was a “grief” over the moral “ruin” of God’s chosen people. Their “pride” in themselves reflected what they were “seeking”; self-pleasure, self-satisfaction, self, self, self! God said, “I abhor your pride” and “I hate” the things you have placed your trust in (“Strongholds”).

God said to “Seek” Him. How? Isaiah 55:3, 6-7 gives some direction. “Incline your ear” (listen to God), “come to Me” (change your direction. Repent.), “hear” (obey), “call upon Him” (confess your need for Him.), “forsake” your wicked ways and unrighteous thoughts, and “return to the Lord” (forsake the ways of the world).

God says, “Seek My face” in Psalm 27:8. Seek Him fully. Not seeking just parts of Him such as peace, power, or grace. If we are seeking Him face to face in humble love and obedience, the relationship is beyond articulation. Are we settling for so little? Are we worshipping in style rather than in truth.

David’s heart was to “dwell” in the house of the Lord forever. Does that desire consume us as well? Or do we find our heart satisfied with far less?

“Seek” Him and He will be found (1 Chronicles 28:9). “Seek” His face and He will hear and 

heal (2 Chronicles 7:14). “Seek” Him that your ways may be “pure” (Psalm 119:9-16). God calls us to “seek” Him “if you have been raised with Christ” (Colossians 3:1-4), and finally God “rewards” those who “seek” Him (Hebrews 11:6).

May we in absolute honesty search our hearts and have God reveal the purity and depth of our “seeking”. May we be found as good and faithful stewards recognizing the price paid by our Lord and Savior for the privilege to “seek”!