wrestling with the Living God

Okay, so I am continuing what will be a long process of trying to put some kind of order to the chaotic jumble of thoughts, insights, inner rebukes and questions that were stirred over the course of ten days in Cap Haitien, Haiti (I realize many have been simmering for years; some just bubbled to the surface there). I scribbled some of them down on everything from scraps of wrinkled paper to my latest journal; some of them are simply echoing somewhere in the recesses of that warped place that I call “my mind” – and I have already learned that there is no telling what triggers them, making them mentally audible.

I am sipping coffee while wrestling with what I suspect will now always be varying volumes and intensity of the question, “Do I really need this (“this” being the brew that Don puts together here)?” That is just one of a gazillion “conscience aftershocks” that comes after being confronted by mile after mile of people with absolutely nothing! I suspect I will respond to that question differently from day to day; but today, my heart seems content to thank God for the flavor and the atmosphere at Café Galletti – and see it as today’s setting for processing the thought that bubbled to the surface as I sat on the bus this morning (noting that after seeing the streets of Cap Haitien, the traffic that I remember grumbling about here seems unusually orderly!).

Anyway, to the thought. It burst out of a Bible verse that I was exposed to early and often in my journey in “the church.” In the Bible version that I first heard it in, Paul’s words read: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, New International Version). Even in my spiritual infancy, I remember thinking that statement seemed almost too obvious. I didn’t know much about God but I knew plenty about me and to be told that He is more “glorious” than I am seemed to grotesquely overstate the obvious.

I now realize that it didn’t take long for me to subconsciously mentally file that verse away as one (of many!) that I didn’t really and fully know what to do with…but rather than poking at it, sort of set it aside as a statement that on the one hand was an “obvious cornerstone” of what “we believe” yet on the other hand seemed to be saying more than what I was hearing.

I have begun to realize that the phrase “all…fall short” caused me to subconsciously squirm as much as anything. I can now identify thoughts under the surface that cruelly interpreted the verse: “Ohhhh, you can and even should keep trying…but you’ll never really make it. In fact, try harder; you’ll keep seeing how futile it is and how hopeless you are. You will always fall short.” I remember one writer who described that sense of futility as “being trapped in the room of good intentions.”

Of course all have sinned; still do and as long as we have a pulse, always will. I glance across the table and see both my personal journal and today’s newspaper and I am well aware that both are full of a wide assortment of reminders of that.
But both my mental and scribbled notes remind me of a tiny glimmer of new light that touched part of that verse. One teacher/writer that I stumbled onto explained that the phrase “fall short” meant more like “lacks” or “doesn’t get…at least not fully.”

That helped a tiny bit: I certainly don’t fully get “the glory of God.”

More words from that teacher/writer (in case you’re wondering, it was Major Ian Thomas) and some of my own thoughts combined to brighten that new light a little more: “Of course I don’t fully “get” God! In order for Him to be the God that I truly need, He must be far beyond anything I can comprehend; flawless, perfect, glorious…even holy. I will always come up short of what a God like that would have to demand of people who look for and need Him.” But there must be more going on in order for that to not lead me deeper into futility and despair. That is when it hit me: “I also don’t fully “get” what He offers; what He extends, what He provides. Because of His glory, He has to provide that; it is an inseparable aspect of true glory. ”

Yes, the demand/expectation/standard is there…but so is the provision to “meet” it; and beyond that, when I fail to meet it, it corrects (glorifies?) even my “best intentions.”

I “fall short” in my understanding of that; as long as I have a pulse, I will never “get it” completely – and/or I am constantly prone to forget it! I will continue to fall short in seeing what is really demanded of me…yet I will simultaneously continue to come up short in seeing what is right here for me!

That is still in the (lifelong?) process of being clarified in and for me. Fighting to find words for it is part of my wiring. I don’t know if they’ll click with anyone else; wrestling with them helps me – so thanks for an outlet for what I might call “revelatory self-indulgence.”