Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

Knowing God

Tuesday, December 31, 2002

John 1:1-5, 18
1) In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
2) He was with God in the beginning.
3) Through him all things were made;
without him nothing was made that has been made.
4) In him was life,
and that life was the light of men.
5) The light shines in the darkness,
but the darkness has not understood it ...
18) No one has ever seen God ...

This is a day for reflection, repentance, and resolution. Tomorrow the baby is born, 2003 begins, we can start over. What do I want to change? Reinhold Neibuhr's prayer comes to mind:

Lord, grant me
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and
the wisdom to know the difference.

I can't know the future, what the stock market will do, what will happen this year to those I love, to me. I don't even know if it will snow tonight. But what I really don't know ... is God.

God knows me, but I can't know him. That was brought home to me in a beautiful essay by Ruth Burrows in The Watchful Heart, which I would like to share with you:

God is darkness in this life but a blessed darkness, a darkness our deepest self wants. Anthing less than the All, which being no-thing and total mystery, must be darkness to us, would never satisfy us. We cannot have ... a God made to our own measure, even our finest measure, whom we can grasp with our minds.

Loyally we must accept him in darkness, refuse to identify him by any standards no matter how sublime and spiritual these may seem. We must not try to drag God out of divine secrecy, but rather desire with all our hearts to be taken into it.

Thus everything, natural goods, moral goods, spiritual perceptions, illuminations, gifts of no matter how high and rare a kind, the most lofty communications that can be conceived - all these are things, creatures, means, and far, far removed from God. Our tendency is always to turn them into idols, substitute them for the impenetrable mystery. Faith is a constant stripping of what we understand to be God in order that God may be what he is in reality. Faith is a flight from where we are to where God is.

Father, you let me call you Father, you make yourself accessible to me, thank you. I will take nothing for granted in our relationship. You are God. I am not.

Devotions Archive

Knowing God

Tuesday, December 31, 2002