I remember my drive to Florida a year ago: as James and I drove through the mountains, we experienced both day and night. James pointed out that neither day nor night was more beautiful. At night, the sky was full of stars and the moon was bright. As the car climbed the mountain our imaginations were at work, thinking of the beauty surrounding us hidden by the darkness. During the day we were able to see off into the distance. We stared in awe at the rock formations and the vegetation admiring God’s creation. Both the light and the dark provided a different view of the same landscape.
I think we often like to compare things. Do you prefer night or day? Do you like the ocean or a lake? Do you prefer the mountains or flatland? Do you like pews or chairs? Do you prefer common cup or individual cup?
God is in both the night and the day. God created the ocean and the lake, the mountain and flatland. God does not prefer one over the other! God knows our praise if it’s from a pew or a chair. God's forgiveness is experienced in common cup and individual cup. Sometimes we’re so sure that God is only in the “best” things – yet God is in the most unexpected places.
God is in the Israelite slave. God is in the unnamed woman. God is in our hymns of praise. God is in Amnon who raped his sister Tamar. God is in the immigrant, widow, and orphan. God is in Judas who betrays Jesus. God is in the faith of Abraham. God is in the stranger and the alien. God is in Jonah when he is swallowed by the whale. God is in the children at Jesus feet. God is in Peter when he denies Jesus.
God does not live by the same limits we do. God’s forgiveness is much different than human forgiveness. God finds beauty in the potential of the darkness and beauty in the clearness of the light. God finds beauty in what we are scared the light will reveal, and beauty in the imagination that the darkness provides.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
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in Amnon...in Judas...Something I've been experiencing is that the more I apply that attitude, the more I find the light in the dark, the more there's a dark that gets darker because of this new way it *could* be light. It's really visible if it's a person in front of me, because they recognize themselves in my description of them but only as what they *could* have been if they didn't have some other motive, or weren't hiding some part of the story.
All Life systems suffer from having an ongoing nemesis that they're designed to oppose. And they could benefit so much from having an account of that nemesis, instead of just consigning it to outer darkness. In fact, they're always in danger of becoming they're nemesis otherwise. So, for example, my teaching really began when I found that stupidity is almost always alternate intelligence, the way the world is problematic, so any capacity for dealing with it is going to run into itself and get in its own way.
And yet there's always that residual, that gets ever more residual the more we try to bring it in. And looking down that road we see a cross, and one more explanation for it.
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