Since childhood, there has been a sense that true intrinsic meaning and fulfillment is just around the corner. It is something I can almost reach, but can’t quite grasp. It appears like an apparition that once discerned, vanishes before it takes its final form. It dissolves like a myst in a windy harbor.
Somewhere, lies a light, hidden in the darkness, which words cannot adequately describe. A light, which has been shadowed through thousands of years of poetry and story telling. It’s a beauty which is best illustrated through analogy rather than direct descriptions. For no words, can adequately describe it.
It is found in ancient and modern writings alike. It is whispered in a sunset, the first snow fall, a summer rain and through the wild flowers in the spring. It is felt during Christmas and hints itself when you fall in love.
It is a profound beauty that seems just out of reach. You can almost smell it, taste it, touch it, but like a mirage, it moves further away when attempting to close the distance. This beauty is not a mirage though. It is real, but it is a reality in which I have not been able to fully grasp.
Since the dawn of time, men have chased it to no avail through money, power, sex , self love, world conquest, and professional success. But only in the stillness, through meditations and devotion, through self sacrifice and love, we see a foreshadowing of it.
According to Thomas Aquinas, it is only found through a supernatural union with God, but because of man’s own limitations, and God’s eternalness , one cannot grasp this perfect beauty in this life. I believe, this is the reason we often perceive it in the abstract.
C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity that if one finds a longing for something that cannot be obtained in this world, then the logical conclusion is that he was meant for another. We feel hunger, food exists to satisfy this longing. We feel thirst, there is such a thing as water. We have sexual longings, there is a thing called sex. We long for permanence in an ephemeral world, one can only conclude that there must be another.
My whole life, I have been on a journey of trying to discover the nature of reality. As soon I think I understand, it opens another door in which I realize I understand very little. As time goes on, I am realizing that nothing fits in a tight box. The more understanding one has, the more one discerns his own ignorance. But the more I ponder on this, the more I understand the beauty and necessity of a boundless God, who is unmoved by man’s boxes.
It can all seem so complicated. It’s so easy to endlessly philosophize life, but the answer was given 2000 years ago by a Jewish carpenter. Jesus gave the answer clearly. “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” – John 14:6. Simple, concise, and it seems almost too easy.
Could all of the questions I anguish over truly be answered in the person of Jesus, and what exactly does that mean? How does that play out in the world that I live? The life of careers, marriage, bills, taxes, raising fully functioning kids, stress, depression? What about from a global perspective in war, poverty, starvation, disease and suffering?
I don’t want to see God only through the abstract, I want to see him move dramatically through my life, my family, my community and my world, but God is moving through all these things. We just have to ‘be still, and know that he is God’ – Psalms 46:10.
Life can get so distracting. We lose our perspective, and it’s easy to lose sight of all the beauty being orchestrated around us. Through all of the suffering that us fallen people bring, God is working all things together for his glory. Once we stop and look, we start to see all his glory around us. We stop seeing him only through the abstract , and start to see him in our world, working dramatically in us and through us.
For this, I am thankful. May we be a people who strive for understanding, love, peace and a people who point to the man who gave us the answers to our questions 2000 years ago and gave us access to himself through the cross.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Rogue Journal 