I often come into these self-reflective moments; do you? Well I’m in one right now, and want to write about what’s on my heart. It isn’t actually a tangible thing or idea; it is more of a sense of awareness that I am being hit with—almost like an out-of-body experience, but not really. Moments like this, I take it as a Christian, come from the LORD. I am being hit with the reality of life—which I take as a I gift; being hit with this reality that is—what I mean is that there is a type of awareness wherein it is almost like you are given a chance to stand back and simply look out at all that stands before you. There is this constant drip of movement and unfortunately chaos in the world, and without knowing it I get caught up in it. In other words it just seems like as a people all across the globe we are all caught up in this drama that gets called ‘life,’ and life doesn’t like us to slow down and realize what we are part of; I mean the phenomena or experience of daily life. I wake up (usually at about 4pm because I work the graveyard) feel compelled to get as much reading that I can get done prior to going to work; alongside other things, important things like see my wife and kids—and eat dinner of course! Then it’s off to work. This process happens over and again on a daily basis; before you know it your kids are both in high school with one of them heading into their senior year. With all that is good in this life, particularly as I think about my wife and kids and the blessings that they are to me, you also begin to realize that we are seemingly in a rush to get somewhere; but where?!

I read theology books, as you know, lots of theology books! But I read the Bible more, and always have; this has led me to reading lots of theology books and other books about the Bible. I’ll finish one book of the ten I have going at one time, and feel a sense of accomplishment; I’ll also wonder how that particularly book, whatever it might be, has edified me and helped me to grow deeper into the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Sometimes after I read theology books—historical, constructive, Dogmatic—I’ll put it down and feel this sort of emptiness. And this is what I mean about the ‘constant drip’ of daily life itself; I seem to be chasing after something that I can never really attain or grasp. I’ve tasted and seen that the LORD is good, and I’ve experienced what it is to be in his presence where all is still and yet bursting with the greatest excitement and sense of wonderment that one could encounter. When I read theology books I’m constantly looking for something deeper and greater, in regard to growing in knowledge of God that heretofore I hadn’t yet encountered or experienced. I have a great desire to know and hear God’s voice, and I will not stop seeking that no matter what; it’s my reason for living! And yet I’ll put a theology book down—even good ones sometimes—and almost feel let down. This sense like: okay, that was amazing it was stellar, but now what? I guess I’ll pick up the next theology book and see if that will help slow my life down and bring me into the stillness of God’s life in even greater depths; but then I’ll finish that book, and often have that same empty feeling. There is only one book that actually satisfies the deepest longings of my soul; the Bible. I am about to finish my thirty-ninth time through the whole Bible having read through the New Testament concurrently over the last twenty-three years hundreds and hundreds of times. I read it so much because the God I have encountered there in Christ is the God my soul longs for; he is the God where my life touches down and finds its greatest meaning and telos. And I’m not talking about doing critical bible study—God knows I think this is important as well, I have two degrees in such endeavor that illustrates the importance I see in that—but what I am referring to is just reading the Bible. I see the Bible as the Holy Ground surrounding the Burning Bush where the living presence of God in Christ encounters me in and through the fire of his inextinguishable life. When I read the Bible, it doesn’t matter what book of the Bible I’m reading, I always have this sense that I am in a place where I should at least take my shoes off and begin trembling. Not that this is always that conscious or visceral, but in the back, if not in the front of mind it is this reality that attends my reading of the Bible. I want to be still, like all the time, and just know that he is God and I am not. I find peace and tranquility in the posture that brings in these moments of self-awareness. And really, it isn’t self-awareness, but it is God awareness, and in that awareness I come to have a genuine sense of self-awareness; self-knowledge. Maybe this is why I am having this moment right now.

As I look around at the chaos and noise of the world, because of my life in Christ, I can step back in the Holy Spirit’s spaciousness and simply be still and know that he is God. This is what my soul longs for, it is something that theology books can help provide some important ways to imagine things by their ability to bear witness to Christ; but really, it is only Christ in his mediated immediate confrontation of me that reality becomes illumined in such a way that even the noise and chaos of ‘life’ is seen from the reality of his life; his life and reality that has invaded the deep spaces, the noisiest and most chaotic sectors of this world system and ultimately reversed it with his indestructible life. This is the God that I want to, I need to encounter over and again, afresh and anew or I don’t think there’s much worth living for. I often feel empty, as if I am just going through the motions, almost a sense of depression; but then I encounter the living Word of God in Jesus Christ once again, over and over again on a daily basis and he brings to light the nourishment that my starving soul needs each and every day.

There is so much drama going on out there. I see people going through, what I take to be the motions of what the world tells us life is supposed to be, only to miss what it really is in the stillness of God’s life for us in Christ. I see identity politics, and suffering, sickness and death and the way cultures attempt to mitigate or cope with that; I see this as the motions of life. There is no rest in the motions of life, there is only rest in the motion of God’s life for us in Christ; a life, again, that has penetrated the motions of daily life and imbued it with a cruciform reality that ultimately has brought and is bringing new creation and reversal the likes of which most people never slow down enough to contemplate. I know that God is real, and that he tastes sweet. He wants us to be able to step back and look at all the noise and chaos—particularly as that is present through the churches—and for us to slow down and begin to participate in the motion of his life; a life that is grounded in the interpenetrating reality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He wants us to rest in the sabbath of his life, and out of this rest bear witness to who he is in a world that cannot extricate itself from itself; in a world that has no rest, but only a noise and chaos that drowns out the reality as that is in God’s life for us and with us in Jesus Christ. amen