One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting
to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. -André Gide
Writers will know what I mean when I say, I feel a great sense of peace once I have gotten something out of my head and onto the page. Until then, certain ideas, not all, not even many, but certain few course through one’s mind, living a life of their own, torturing the Writer’s mind until he makes them permanent, or at least more permanent than himself. If left too long, some ideas die, forgotten. Yet, so it is with ideas that escape, that they are birthed, saved. The immaterial made manifest in material. Ideal made actual. Heaven brought down to earth. So the Writer is saved.
The great irony is that this is the opposite of our expectations. We expect to be taken up to Heaven and not Heaven brought down to us. How could material ever adequately reflect immaterial? It is not right that actual be greater than ideal. How can word ever live up to thought?
Yet, at every turn, God upends the upside world we know and shows us something better, more surprising, and truer. He creates Man, made in the image of God, out of breath and dust. He creates Woman, Beauty in Person, out of a rib bone. He creates the World and then destroys it in the Flood. He builds up a Nation for Himself and then withers it in the Wilderness. He rescues a Nation from oppression and then rescues it from decadence by sending it into oppression, again. He warns against setting up kings and kingdoms and then uses a king to bring about the King and the Kingdom. He Curses Man and Creation and then manifests the Holy into that Unholy making it Holy, again. He upholds the Law and the Prophets by Fulfilling an Old Covenant with a New Covenant. He ascends into Heaven to descend to a new Jerusalem. He enters into Time to provide us a path to Eternity.
So it is with this faith that resists our attempts to tame and domesticate it. A continual renewal, reversal, and inversion.
Words escape. The page is read and the mind births ideas. The material is made manifest in the immaterial. Actual is made ideal. Earth is brought up to Heaven. So the Heart is saved.
Patterns revealed in time and space gifted to us so that we could understand something real. By them, we can piece together a picture of the whole. We can look back through the Prism of Creation, see the colors converge, the many become one, impure become pure, and diversity become unity.
As it is said, God works in mysterious ways. This was my path. Now, wherever it leads, it’s part of your path, too. In truth, whether they can see it or not, can grasp it or not, this is everyone’s path. This is reconstruction from deconstruction.
Love God and Neighbor
Preach the Gospel and Make Disciples
Mercy Triumphs over Judgment
This cup is the new covenant in my blood,
which is poured out for you.
-Luke 22:20b