Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

Embrace this risky thing

Monday, April 17, 2017

From Matthew 28
This story has circulated among the Jews until the present day.

How do I know what I know? And once I know something, can I change my mind? If I change my mind, am I more likely to be abandoning or drawing nearer to truth?

Typical male, I don't like asking another person for directions on the road (although I'm happy to give Google virtual control). I remember dates and times and say so with authority. But those and many others are aspects of truth with a very small t.

Did Jesus rise from the dead? Will I? Are my father and grandfather and his father in heaven? Will I meet them there again someday?

As Christians we are so grateful that the Bible gives us at least some answers to tough questions like these. Are those answers trustworthy? How do I know they are? Who told me so?

Asking questions like these is like walking around in a house of mirrors. Answers fly apart in all directions. I can't hold them to my heart for long. And since none of us returns from the dead, this two dimensional uncertainty must be true for all of us.

I am grateful for a third dimension. The length and breadth of my belief are immeasurably enriched by its depth. Sure, I can measure truth in time and space, but the measure that brings me peace and confidence is "depth."

Depth is what I experience when I'm no longer on my own. I don't agonize over answers so much as be quiet with the questions. And then eventually, it's not me reading the words of Scripture so much as God inside me reading them.

Wendell Berry, poet naturalist farmer, wrote simply this: "Sit and be still. Until in the time of no rain you hear beneath the dry wind's commotion in the trees, the sound of flowing water among the rocks, a stream unheard before. And then you are where breathing is prayer."

Sounds like Elijah in King Ahab's desert. Sounds like Jesus after his baptism. Sounds like Moses waiting to see what will happen next. Sounds good to me.

Stories circulate among all of us until the present day. Some of them are true. Some of them are not. It is not necessary that I know what I cannot know, but there is one imperative. I must pray. As best I can to God, before God, with God, in God's presence. Adoring God, confessing to God, thanking God, challenging, imploring and begging God.

Thomas Merton once said, confusingly, "It is a risky thing to pray, because the danger is that our very prayers get between God and us. The great thing in prayer is not to pray, but to go directly to God. Let prayer pray within you, whether you know it or not."

In these days that try men's souls, oh Lord, I come to you and pray. You remind me that this day is like all other days, and you call it good. Your strong love rises to meet me in my words and my silence, my gratitude and my requests, my uncertainties and what I think I know. Breathing in and breathing out, let me see more and more just how to pray.

Devotions Archive

Embrace this risky thing

Monday, April 17, 2017