Tag Archives: light

The Language of God

When I read the Bible, I look for patterns of imagery and language that help point to the heart of what is being revealed. Paul tells us that the language of God is the language of the Holy Spirit and it must be read with that in mind in order to understand what the Bible is saying about God and about us.

The language of the Holy Spirit transcends time and place, for it speaks to the deepest longings of the human heart: “What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.” (1Corinthians 2:12-13)

The language of Scripture has beauty and truth embedded within its very core, and it is through the power of this language that we absorb the truth of the reality of God’s presence in the world and in our lives. The Bible opens with God saying, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). Before there was light, the universe was void and without life and form.

And here is how John describes the second creation story, the birth of God’s one and only Son: “In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it” (John 1:4–5).

And here is Jesus during His three-year ministry: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). John echoes this in his first letter: “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

It is the light of God that flows out of the darkness and into and through the window of our mind and heart. When we open our minds to what this light really is, we see with a new heart and transformed mind a world flooded with the beauty, truth and mystery of God’s everlasting presence.

“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom

and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable his judgments,

and his paths beyond tracing out!

“Who has known the mind of the Lord”

Or who has been his counselor?

“Who has ever given to God,

That God should repay them?”

For from him and through him and for him

are all things.

To him be the glory forever! Amen.

(Romans 11:33-36)

Winter Light: Intimations of a Kinder Season to Come

IMG_0483In early February, the light of day begins to change. Without much warning, the steel gray of deep winter gives way to intimations of a kinder season ahead. Daylight lingers longer into the afternoon and the warmth of the light reflecting off the windows of distant skyscrapers battles the forbidding coldness of the moment.

And in the late afternoon, when the sky is clear, the setting sun paints the western horizon in vivid oranges and reds, hinting that the cloistered winter months will soon be a memory. It’s then when I begin to feel the draw of the hills and mountains of the countryside beyond the shores of this water bound city, even though snow and ice still covers much of the land. It’s then when I begin to dream of new adventures along the trails that I have traveled in seasons past. I have a particular love for the Appalachian Trail that crosses twelve states from Georgia  to Maine.

Web Pictures Group 2 086I am often asked why I leave the comforts of home for a less predictable environment.  I guess there are many reasons, but what I always come back to is the way the trail connects me to the mysteries of God’s universe. I may inhabit a world constructed by the hands of man and I may marvel at all its complexity and brilliance, but the city of man with its activities and diversions never seems to be enough.

The Bible gives us one explanation for this unquenchable desire to reach beyond the circumference of place and time. Solomon in Ecclesiastes says that God “placed eternity in the hearts of all men and women” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Elsewhere it says that Cain became a restless wonderer of the earth, and as such, he became an example of the seeming restlessness of people who, like ghosts, bustle to and fro in dances of endless activity. It is this desire for the eternal that is built into our human makeup, and it is the fact that we live in an impermanent world that we feel the strong, nagging need to seek places that provide the peace that comes upon us when we finally find a place that connects us to the God who brought everything into existence.