Thirsty

Currently I am in the great state of Pennsylvania. I am fairly mercenary about states though, my favourite one being where I find myself. So right now PA is my fave in spite of the bitter cold. I am here visiting my oldest and closest friend Mike and some other really good friends I've made throughout the years I've been visiting here (One of whom is graciously putting me up for a few days.). Mike's father is a pastor and this morning I went to their service and Mike preached this morning about how God cuts our story out of us and gives us his own story. If you stop and think about it it is really quite profound: God imparts himself to us empowering us to live a life above what we could make for ourselves. The agent of this cutting being the sword of the spirit which the books of Ephesians and Hebrews says is the Word of God, and that Word of God is alive, sharp, and powerful enough to pierce our souls. It is already understood that Jesus is the Word made flesh, incarnated if you prefer, and dwelt among us. There is a lot of teaching on that aspect but not a lot of teaching on the aspect of the Word of God being alive. Today I think that some puzzle pieces clicked together in my mind concerning this and I felt like sharing it.

For the past few months I have been reading more voraciously then normal, and for me normal is quite a lot so for me to say that I'm reading more then my usual is saying something. (You may be wondering what this has to do with my previous paragraph, but if you stick around it will make sense). Needless to say I have been devouring books. While reading I have been feeling sort of like a traveller lost in the Sahara Desert: that almost frantic feeling of fear once the realization hits that I don't know where I am. It’s been like that when I've been reading. Something in me has been yearning for something MORE and none of the books I've been reading have been able to assuage that feeling. True I've read some books and am reading books that are striking emotional resonances within me. I'm currently reading God in Search of Man by Abraham Heschel and it is a profound book of religious Jewish philosophy and his comments on the nature of God are amazing. I'm reading through Encounters with Merton by Henri Nouwen and am gleaning a lot from it and even though it is a slim volume it has a lot of insight. However there is a profound difference between books written about God and the book that contains the Word of God. As I was listening to the sermon this morning I was reading along in my Bible with the scriptural quotations being used and I realized that this was what I was missing and I felt like an idiot because the answer was there in front of my face the whole time. As I was reading it I could feel the disconnect in my soul reconnect with the divine and I realized that I have spent far too little time in the Word and with the Word and spent too much time reading about the Word. As I read scripture the yearning I had inside was satisfied.

One of the Psalms says, "As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you Oh God." Thinking about that passage took on deeper significance for me this morning. One thing I love about scripture is that there can be a passage that you've read over and over again, then in one moment it becomes alive in your heart and takes on a meaning it didn't previously have. If Christ is the Word incarnate, made flesh, I do not think it is a stretch to say that as we read the words of God that THE Word of God incarnates in the words we read in scripture piercing our hearts and transforming us more into what we are supposed to be and what it is possible for us to become. Thomas Merton wrote, "By the reading of scripture I am so renewed that all seems to be renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, cooler blue, the trees a deeper green, light is sharper on the outlines of the forest and the hills and the whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music in the earth under my feet." I really like that but I also like the fact that this not only happens to us without, it also happens to us within: truth is illuminated, will is discerned, paths are made straight, chaos gives way to peace, and emotional tumult gives way to wholeness.