"Hook-up......................."

With those families in Connecticut yet on my mind and in my prayers, I was approached by a fellow suffering a different kind of separation, looking for answers to his situation. There are, of course, no good explanations for the mystery of man. There is, in my theology at least, no “quick cure” for life as it comes unto us. Does that leave us, then, as believers with nothing to offer the world in terms of Christianity being a source of hope, a promise of peace and strength accessible to us in this present darkness? I really do wonder sometimes when all I hear out of the Church is a demand for “faith”, one side of that coin preaching it as if such possession is a self-produced ability to perform miracles, and the other bunch, while also seeing it an attribute we, ourselves, create, defining it much like an inter-dimensional cord affording us little other than hope of life after death. Seems to me the reality of a supernatural entity, the Third PERSON of the Trinity to which we all confess in our credos, has been squeezed out of existence by both parties, the latter stripping Him of all identity and the first believing they, themselves, have been transformed into His likeness. Truth gets muzzled or misplaced and those in need of substance get, instead, merely chapter and verse with no breath breathed into it. Too easy, I think, to quote the Bible as if it can, alone, produce Christ. Better to claim our own need of submergence into Him, to take the hand of those hurting, admit our own inadequacy, and invite them to walk with us “beyond the veil” in hope of knowing His presence. Somewhere in this we’ve lost, not only the Ark of the Covenant, but the Holy of Holies as well……