God is incomprehensible. A liturgical corollary of this truth is this: authentic worship of this God must, at some level, remain incomprehensible. Worship that enables us to encounter the living God should leave worshipers a bit stupefied.... This theological commonplace hints at a less seemly side of our natural desire for understandable worship - our desire for an understandable god, a god we can control. -- Mark Galli in Beyond Bells and Smells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy. Looking particularly at that last sentence though, I am certainly convicted of my own attempts to make this god of mine understandable and, therefore, controllable. Though, as a seminarian, we must struggle through these mysteries to come to some resolution as their use in expounding upon the scriptures and their use in practical ministry, I must come to accept that what I will walk away with after three years will not be a complete and full understanding of God. I must come away with an awe and wonder (and at times being stupefied) at the grace and love that He has shown us in sending His son to forgive us, to bring us in to reconciliation with Him, and to join in proclaiming this glorious news to the world around us. Gods grace is in some ways so simple, but in others it defies our attempts to understand and control it.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:24:11 +0000
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