Tag Archives: time

Not Willing that Any should Perish

22 Thursday May 2014

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The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
  –From Peter’s second letter; 2Peter 3:9

I’ve been wondering lately about my view of my life and my sense of time.  More specifically, I’m coming to believe that my view of my life is too narrow and my sense of time too linear.

For a while, and in this blog you have read it, I have believed that the ultimate goal of life is relational union with God.  “Union with God” can be said differently: to know Him, where “know” is the most intimate knowing of another person; or, to be one with Him; or, to participate in the life of the Trinity; or, to partake of His Divine nature; or, to join the Divine Dance (Gr. perichoresis) with the Trinity.  We struggle to put words to it because it is a mystery.  Not a mystery in the sense that we must puzzle it out; rather, a genuine mystery in that no human really knows how it happens, only that it does and is the goal of our existence.

Over the past few years I have been pretty good at noticing God at work in the circumstances of my current life as He works to draw me into relational union with Him; I try to notice and cooperate as moment-by-moment he teaches me the steps of the Divine Dance with Him.

But, what if the “moment” is more than I have previously thought?

I’ve begun thinking about my linear view of time within the specific context of the ultimate goal of my life.  And, I’m thinking about this for a reason: I’m in the middle of a radical life change of direction.  So, within the context of the ultimate goal for my life and my immediate, upcoming change, here is what I’m thinking…

For a number years I’ve been praying along with the ancient Israeli King, David, that God would do whatever He needed to in my life in order to rid me of the distortions and attachments and wounds within me that hinder my relationship with Him.  Or, as a past writer, Julian of Norwich, would have put it, I pray that I might be “oned” with God.  It is a dangerous prayer, but I have meant it, at least as I have understood what it meant.

I have been alive nearly two score and eighteen years.  All this time I have viewed my life as a linear journey through time which has brought me to this point.  But, what if time collapses to a single moment, a moment which contains my birth, my lived life, and my death, all simultaneously?  And, what if God, aware of my later life prayer to do with me whatever is necessary to bring me into relational oneness with Him, actually began to answer that prayer from the moment of my birth?  Wouldn’t that change how I view my path through life?

This is not as preposterous as it might first sound.  For at least the first thousand years, the Christian Church believed this.  Even today, when celebrating the resurrection of Jesus at Easter, we say, “Christ is risen,” not “Christ has risen.”

Today, the Eastern Orthodox Church believes that as we participate in the Divine Liturgy, what the Western Church might refer to as Sunday morning worship, all of time collapses into the present moment.  All that was, is, and is yet to be is fully present in the moment…all of past history and future events are occurring simultaneously in the present.  Another mystery, to say the least.

I have occasionally said this about important moments in my life: “All the events of my life have brought me to this point.”  But I have meant that in an autonomous sense.  Let me try  to give an example.  I say about my meeting my wife that I had to take the path through life that I did so that our paths would cross on that day more than 27 years ago.  She had nothing to do with any of my life decisions that ultimately brought us together prior to our meeting; it was all me.  She played no role in it, it was all me up to that wonderful day.  Sometimes we attribute such things to “fate.”

I believe that this autonomous living is how I have thought of God’s involvement in my life prior to my turning to Him fifteen years ago.  I now realize that I have believed I moved through life making choices until I finally made a choice for Him, and there He was waiting for me.  Not too different from the way I would say I met my wife.  Whether fate, dumb luck—whatever the mechanism—I have generally thought of my life-before-God as life-with-no-God-involvement-until-I-turned-to-Him.  It is a common enough teaching of the Church.  I have taught it!

But, what if at the moment of my birth (actually, from the moment of all creation) God knew that in my fifties I would be desperately praying for Him to rid me of the junk in my life that keeps me from being oned with Him?  The implication is this: rather than God sitting back waiting for me to turn to Him, I now believe that from the moment of my birth He was active in my life answering the prayer He knew I would pray more than fifty years later.

For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether…
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.
–A Psalm of King David

In other words, I’m moving toward believing that God began answering my prayer of oneness with Him the moment I prayed it; but because all moments exist together, His answer included all of my life before I prayed the prayer.

Yeah, I know…this brings up all kinds of questions of my free will and God’s will for me…a debate with a long history within Christianity.  But the intertwining of two free wills, God’s and mine, is nothing if not also a mystery.  Goodness, the intertwining of mine and my wife’s respective free wills is mysterious enough!!

So, what’s the point of all this?  Well, as I look back over my life at the decisions I’ve made, good and bad, at least from my perspective, and the resulting path I’ve taken, I have a choice of how to assess it.  On the one hand I can believe that I was slogging through life alone until I finally turned to God.  On the other hand I can believe God was in my life always, working at answering my “future” prayer to be oned with Him.

If I believe the former, then I can easily fall into regret for decisions made and the path I took.  Then I make myself feel better by saying that God will “redeem it” for some future use.

However, if I believe the latter, that God was at work all of my life answering my prayer, then my entire life is an answered prayer. Because of my own free will and my refusal to acknowledge Him for more than 40 years, He answered my “future” prayer the only way He could, which is the path of life I have lived.  Therefore, my life path is not something to be regretted and “redeemed”; rather, it is something for which to be utterly thankful.

Wow!

18 Saturday Jan 2014

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wow /wou/: expressing astonishment or admiration.

The Boardwalk At Trouville-Monet

The Boardwalk At Trouville-Monet

Recently I visited the local art museum to view an exhibit focused on French art from the late 1600s to the early 1900s.

This particular exhibit contained many works from the greats of that time period, such as, Degas, Pissarro, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, and van  Gogh.

At first, I was moving slowly through the exhibit pausing in front of each work with an audible and involuntarily, “Wow!”  The genius of each artist was evident even to me.

With each passing gallery my pace began to quicken; I was pausing less at each work.  Toward the end of the two-and-a-half hours I noticed my initial “Wow!” response had faded.  Sure, I would occasionally come across a work that stood out in some way and I would get another shot of Wow!, but, for the most part it had faded even though I was still standing before works of true art by rare geniuses.  Mostly, though, I was getting tired.  There was no longer enough Wow! to keep me engaged and energized.

We humans are fickle creatures, aren’t we?  We are forever seeking Wow! and then more Wow!  I think this points to the central problem with Wow!: we eventually become numb to the initial precipitating Wow! experience and begin looking for more of it—whether in the form of the next adrenaline thrill or the next great novel or a new way to read something in the Bible or the latest generation of smartphone or…wherever.  Like a drug to which we have built up a tolerance, we need a greater and greater Wow! fix to keep our interest.

I noticed something else at the museum.  After viewing the exhibit, our small party of four gathered in the middle of one of the larger galleries to discuss our thoughts of the exhibit and our plans for dinner together.  As we talked, I found myself beginning to stare at several of the nearby impressionist paintings.  Being able to so easily view them together from a distance of about 20 feet allowed me to see them in a way I had never seen them before and to immediately understand impressionism in a new and profound way.  My first response was, of course, Wow!  We continued to stand in the gallery and I began to enjoy the extended time to engage with these few paintings in this new way—I was no longer seeing the paintings; rather, I was experiencing the paintings.  And then a strange thing happened, my Wow! began to change to a quieter and prolonged “wow…”

My Wow! had given way to awe.

My Wow! had given way to awe.

awe /ô/: a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.

“Wonder” is such a terrific synonym for “awe.”  Perhaps you recall a day when you noticed a particularly beautiful sunrise or sunset, one so remarkable that it stopped you in your tracks.  Likely you couldn’t help but stare at it, not thinking about it but experiencing it in wonder.  Standing there, staring at the beauty before you, doing nothing but being in the experience of the moment is, paradoxically, a deliberate act of contemplation.  The “awe” you felt can only come from such deliberate contemplation.

Have you ever been curious why the so-called Christian mystics focus on contemplation of God as the way to God?  It is easy to believe, from our modern standpoint, that contemplating God is an archaic practice for those with nothing else to do.  It is a waste of time, we tell ourselves, because we are not doing anything for God.  Not so.  I believe the act of contemplation is indeed the path to God exactly because of my experience at the museum: without contemplation I only think or hear about God and maybe it gives me a sense of Wow!  I look to God for a Wow!-inducing miracle and then, like those who saw Jesus perform miracles and wanted more, I, too, continuously seek more and more Wow! from God.  However, when I slow down to contemplate God I begin to experience Him more deeply, to experience Him with fear and wonder…to begin to engage Him with a sense of awe.

Contemplation requires time, and, sadly, time is something we have so little of, or so we believe.

The biblical writers often write with a sense of awe:

O Lord, our Sovereign how majestic is your name in all the earth!  You have set your glory above the heavens…When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? (Psalm 8)

Ancient Israel’s King David took the time to contemplate creation around and above him and was clearly in awe of God as he wrote these words.  In those final minutes at the museum, as I began to contemplate the art around me, I found myself in awe of the work and the artists…and of God, their creator.  Contemplating something from God had drawn me into contemplation of God.

Without God’s help, we are simply incapable of seeing Him and contemplating Him.  In the 1300s, a monk from the East, St Gregory Palamas, wrote this about God’s initiative toward us:

[Because we are incapable of seeing God, He] illuminates the mind alone with an obscure light, so as to draw a man to Himself by that within Himself which is comprehensible, and so as to evoke his wonder at that which is incomprehensible, and through this wonder to increase his longing, and through this longing to purify [his desire for] him.  (The Triads)

The light is God, and the mind (nous) of which Palamas speaks is not the brain or the mind as we think of it now.  He speaks of an inner organ of vision with which we are all able to see into the spiritual realm, a sight that has been obscured by the sin of mankind.

God is all around us and is ever inviting us, wishing that none of us turn from Him.  However, because our spiritual vision is so poor, we can only begin contemplating Him with our our senses or intellect through things that we “see,” such as great art.  Thankfully, as we seek Him He is at work in us, His children, clarifying our inner sight so that we might increasingly behold Him in awe.

Next time you see someone staring at a flower, at a sunset, at a two-legged image of God, at a work of art, or even staring off into space apparently wasting time, perhaps it is me contemplating God and experiencing Him in awe.  Come and sit beside me for awhile.