so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19)
One way to rephrase this passage is to say that Paul prayed that we would come to appreciate Psalms 23 and 139 as our reality. Another way is to say that Paul prayed that we would be absolutely blown away by God in our lives. Most days, I think I’m just another of the dumb sheep of Psalm 23, doing my dumb sheep best to follow my nose without giving any real thought to anything. On those days, I think I’m like the people who say, “Yeah, well, if God would do for me what He did for Moses or Paul; if He would do X, Y, and Z, then I would always believe and grasp all that stuff Paul is writing about.”
The problem, of course, is that the people of Israel, who had seen the ten plagues in Egypt, who had crossed through the Red Sea, who had been miraculously given water to drink, and with the cloud and thunder that days earlier had frightened them to the point of saying, “Don’t let God speak to us anymore, Moses. You talk to Him and tell us what He wants,” forged a golden calf and worshipped it.
More rarely, in the absence of all those things, I hear God’s voice in the whisper on the wind or sense His nearness and in the quiet, without the drama, I get it. I also suspect that the drama version isn’t as powerful or deep as the still, small voice.
I think sometimes we want the drama so that we don’t have to participate or stop to pay attention, or to participate. A friend of mine has posted something that I’ll exaggerate because I can’t remember it exactly. A child asks his mother why she shrieks at him. He doesn’t like it when she wigs out. And the angry mother says, “If you had listened to me the first thirty times when I didn’t shriek….” We don’t want to pay attention until God “shouts,” and then we complain that God doesn’t say anything except when He’s wigging out. It’s all His fault.
But maybe if we put down the social media, stopped putting our fingers in our ears and singing “lalalalalalala,” or carved some time out of our busy lives, He might not have to bellow. We might find ourselves more filled with the knowledge, the measure, and the fullness of God. That’s one thing I like about walking. Most of the walk may be lost amid the competing thoughts, but sometimes I reach a point where I can drop all that stuff and pay attention. Those are some of the best times of my life.
The problem, of course, is that the people of Israel, who had seen the ten plagues in Egypt, who had crossed through the Red Sea, who had been miraculously given water to drink, and with the cloud and thunder that days earlier had frightened them to the point of saying, “Don’t let God speak to us anymore, Moses. You talk to Him and tell us what He wants,” forged a golden calf and worshipped it.
More rarely, in the absence of all those things, I hear God’s voice in the whisper on the wind or sense His nearness and in the quiet, without the drama, I get it. I also suspect that the drama version isn’t as powerful or deep as the still, small voice.
I think sometimes we want the drama so that we don’t have to participate or stop to pay attention, or to participate. A friend of mine has posted something that I’ll exaggerate because I can’t remember it exactly. A child asks his mother why she shrieks at him. He doesn’t like it when she wigs out. And the angry mother says, “If you had listened to me the first thirty times when I didn’t shriek….” We don’t want to pay attention until God “shouts,” and then we complain that God doesn’t say anything except when He’s wigging out. It’s all His fault.
But maybe if we put down the social media, stopped putting our fingers in our ears and singing “lalalalalalala,” or carved some time out of our busy lives, He might not have to bellow. We might find ourselves more filled with the knowledge, the measure, and the fullness of God. That’s one thing I like about walking. Most of the walk may be lost amid the competing thoughts, but sometimes I reach a point where I can drop all that stuff and pay attention. Those are some of the best times of my life.
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