God & the Grand Canyon
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path” I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon but have read a lot about it and people have told me much about it so I guess I could say that I know a lot about the Grand Canyon. There are people in my life that I talk to fairly regularly and I know a lot about them too. Especially in this day and age with the Internet it is much easier to really study, communicate and really get to know a lot about almost anything. So while I know a lot about the Grand Canyon and some of my friends, I couldn’t really say that I “know” either. And unless you are the type that freely shares your soul and your innermost thoughts it’s tough to really “know” someone. In my early years I served as an altar boy, went to Sunday school, studied our Catechism, recited scripture in Russian and English and said a few prayers and I guess you could say that I knew about God. Jumping back to the Grand Canyon, with something as massive as the Grand Canyon I think I’d really need to spend a lot of time there and even then I’d likely have have a bunch of extraordinary glimpses into such an awesome creation but I’m not sure I could say that I know and fully experienced the Grand Canyon. I’ve spent time reading and really studying God’s word and I’ve had glimpses into His grace and and gained some incredible life changing insights but I can’t say that I really “know” God. Maybe it is me being an engineer-type but my normal mode of operation is to try and figure things out. Somewhere in life as I became someone and something, as I grew older and wiser, scratch that, as I learned more, that knowledge seems now, more often than not, to stick itself right in the middle of my really knowing other people and knowing God. Every time I see a two year old awestruck over a butterfly floating by, I marvel at how effortlessly they are able to see without the benefit of many years of hard earned “knowing” blurring their sight. In TS Elliot’s The Rock is the passage: To borrow from Oswald Chambers: “We read tomes on the work of the Holy Spirit when … five minutes of drastic obedience would make things clear as a sunbeam……. God will never reveal more Truth about Himself till you obey what you know already.” Nahhh… that can’t be it, that would be too simple, I’m sure I’ll understand some day, I just need to get to church and read some more. We are all so very good at complicating our lives. Somehow we keep on missing that we have already been told that it is not study or figuring it out rather it is careful listening, hearing, and obedience that unlocks the door. What has become of us that we know so much, that we Can move so fast but have no time to really KNOW God. The formula, it seems, is so simple that we discard it in disbelief. “Be still and know that I am God”
Psalm 119-105
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
Where is the Life we have lost living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Psalm 46:10