Josh Broward
March 15, 2009
“God of wonders, beyond our galaxy, You are holy, holy. The universe declares your majesty. You are holy, holy.”1
The first six verses of Psalm 19 use a very ordinary, generic name for God: El. El was the ancient all-purpose word for God. El was the word you used when you looked up and thought, “Wow! There must be Something Great up there or out there that made all this.” The “Something Great up there or out there” was El or God.
In his book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller tells the story of when he went on a long road-trip to find God and to find himself. He says he found God at the Grand Canyon. He was tired and hurting from a long day of hiking, and they camped beside a river.
I was in a lot of pain from the hike, so I was in no mood to mess around. There was no trying to impress Him, no speaking the right words. I simply began to pray and talk to God the way a child might talk to his father.
Beneath the billion stars and beside the river, I called out to God softly.
“Hello?”
The stars were quiet. The river spoke in some other tongue, some [special language] for fish.
“I'm sorry, God. I'm sorry I got so confused about You, got so fake. I hope it's not too late anymore. I don't really know who I am, who You are, or what faith looks like. But if You want to talk, I'm here now. … I feel like You're trying to get through to me. But I feel like you are an alien or something, somebody far away.”
Nothing from the stars. Fish language from the river. But as I lay there, talking to God, being real with Him, I began to feel a bit of serenity. I felt like I was apologizing to an old friend, someone with whom there had been a sort of bitterness, and the friend was saying it was okay, and that he didn't think anything of it. I felt like I was starting over, or just getting started. … I felt a lot of peace.
There is something quite beautiful about the Grand Canyon at night. There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He's doing. (They hang there, the stars, like notes on a page of music, free-form verse, silent mysteries swirling in the blue like jazz.) And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere. Of course, I had always known He was, but this time I felt it, I realized it, the way a person realizes they are hungry or thirsty.2
Sometimes, we just need to know God on this primal level. Like a caveman or cave-woman, we look out into the sky … we feel the ocean waves … we stand on the mountaintop and breath the air of trees and flowers … and something deep within us connects with Someone deep within the universe, and we know there is a God because we feel him in the very fabric of the world. Sometimes, we need that natural experience of God. We need to breath God's air, climb God's rocks, smell God, taste God, feel the breath of God on our skin.
Back in the Grand Canyon, next to the river, under the stars, Donald Miller takes the next step:
The knowledge of God seeped out of my brain and into my heart. I imagined Him looking down on this earth, half angry because his beloved mankind had cheated on Him, had committed adultery, and yet hopelessly in love with her, drunk with love for her. …
I lay there under the stars and thought of what a great responsibility it is to be human. I am human because God made me. … God is reaching out to rescue me. I am learning to trust Him, learning to live by His precepts that I might be preserved.3
In every culture, in every place in the world, people try to connect with the mystical, with the spiritual, with the Beyond, with the El, with God. But how do we connect with this God? How can we little humans touch eternity? What is this God, this El, this Great Mystery, like? What does He/She/It want?
We can't find these answers in the stars. We can't find these answers in the forests or the mountains or the deserts or the oceans. We can't find these answers in yoga or meditation or Feng Shui.
We can recognize God on our own. We can experience God on our own. Because God is always speaking through the stars and the sun and everything that is, we can have that primal knowledge of God, but we can't get far beyond that – just cavemen looking up at the skies and saying: “Wooohhhggg! Bigggg!”
Now, there is something very good about that caveman “Wooahh!Goddddhhh!” Most of us need a little more caveman in us! But if we ever want to get beyond that, we need help. We need the Bible.
Amazingly, the Great God of the Universe has chosen to work through puny little people like us. Amazingly, the Great God of the Universe has chosen to teach us his character and his ways through the words of ordinary people. Amazingly, the Great God of the Universe has left a scattered journal of his dealings with people throughout thousands of years as a guidebook to help more people have similar experiences with God.
God gets our attention through the stars. God gives us the details in the Bible.
The revelation of God is whole
and pulls our lives together.
The signposts of God are clear
and point out the right road.
The life-maps of God are right,
showing the way to joy.
The directions of God are plain
and easy on the eyes. (19:7-8, The Message)
The Bible stands before us like a Lonely Planet Travel Guide. Countless people have traveled these roads with God before us. They have taken wrong turns and hit the speed bumps. They have tried out the motels and restaurants. They know which foods to avoid so you don't end up puking your lunch into a toilet by the beach.
God's instructions are here for our good. God is not just trying to keep us under control or keep us from having fun. The Bible is here as a guidebook of life with God, to help us make this journey well. When we read the Bible like a guidebook, this is a form of prayer. When we sit down to read, expecting to learn, expecting to hear, expecting God to guide us in how to live, this is a form of listening. We are putting ourself in the classroom of the Great God of the Universe, so that we can learn His ways.
And this is worth more than gold or diamonds or emeralds. Living life God's way tastes better than strawberries or honey or ice-cream or chocolate.
We need God's nature because we need to feel God on that deep inner level. We need to know God like we know we are hungry or thirsty.
We need God's Word because we are on a journey to a new place. We have never walked this road before, but others have. We need a guidebook to show us where to go and how to go.
May our words and our thoughts and our actions and all of our lives be pleasing to you, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer!
No comments:
Post a Comment