"Investigation......................"

”The present world we live in does not have much use for God as a living reality. It finds a dead God who can be used to justify dead systems more manageable. That is why the path of contemplation is so difficult, because to walk that path we have to come to the edge of those myths which give our lives meaning and look down into the nothingness surrounding them”……Monty Williams, SJ, “Stepping Into the Mystery”

Our Wednesday evening Bible class, in truth, was a bit “dry” for me last night, the sixth chapter of Acts being merely documented evidence of that initial group of believers being yet human and one of the “deacons” elected to solve the problem being “full” enough of the Holy Ghost so as to find himself brought before the Jewish Council, accused of blasphemy. Our teacher, for whatever reason, elected to build our lesson around “wisdom” and our ninety minutes was mostly spent in quoting Scripture, looking for a definition of such term. There wasn’t much “spelunking” at all, no real investigation of the Gospel, just discussion wherein the obvious, our propensity for error, was illustrated by numerous stories, most of them told by the guy up front. It was enjoyable; but no real expedition into the “meat” of Christianity… I “borrowed” the above quote from Hope’s blog (the link is to the right), some things that she, herself, said, igniting my thoughts as well. In pointing to a discovery that it was her beliefs, not her faith, that suffered having been “rocked off its foundation” in a battle with cancer, she reasoned “I’ve been fighting against how other people think God works, fighting against how I think God should work” and then, in suddenly realizing “Oh! I don’t know how God works”, allowed her spirit to embrace one sentence that was, in her words, “both manageable and unmanageable, too”. “It is a start,” she said; “It is a start.” For me, there was a connection. This was never a matter of claiming truth equated to my interpretation of the Book, never a ministry of thumping denominational tenets in an attempt to accumulate more converts. It’s been a mystery from the beginning, a “born-again” conversion forty-one years ago “merely” providing me an inner anchor-line securing me in my stumble down the road. My life in Christ isn’t a theology written in concrete, but a journey wherein each and every day comes to me as a lesson in learning my original potential, my present purpose in Him. I’m the biggest part of any enigma, His patience with me something called “grace”, His depths more than I can ever conquer……