Perhaps it may turn out a sang,
Perhaps turn out a sermon.

-- R. Burns Epistle to a Young Friend

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Another Listening Post



In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. -- John 1:1


God spoke all into existence, and His Voice is speaking still.  Everything He says is true, and the true is – that is, the true and the real correspond perfectly.  Living as we do in a derivative material world, we have lost the connection between speaking and truth and existence.  In Genesis 2:19, God brought all the animals to the man, not yet fallen, that he might name them, and whatever Adam spoke was what they were called.  Adam was not merely labeling but affirming and “recreating” in cooperation with God.   This is not affirmation in the silly sense that people sometimes use it.  We can’t affirm something that is contrary to the truth – that’s bearing false witness.  We can, however, like Adam, be active participants in God’s creative process as agents, speakers and witnesses, affirming in our lives – thought, word, and deed, the truth He reveals in and to us.     

Once God was silent, and there was a void.  Even His silence is creative.  Into that void, He began to speak and energy boiled through the nothing, laying out and forming the matrix of time and space that will be charged with holding what is to be birthed.  And what He speaks coalesces into matter, dust swirling in the emptiness to form individual bodies, clusters, some ignited with molecular fires that will burn on for billions of years, sparks of life spreading light.  We wonder that there is life in the universe when God’s voice is life?  God spoke ultimately in Christ who is the Word – the Way, the Truth and the Life – the Word wrapped in flesh, walking around in the dust and mire and confusion of human existence. 

It's like what GB was talking about yesterday with regard to the birds and life, ongoing vibrations of the Word.  I started to say that’s all it is, but the too common human view is the restrictive and limited one.  It’s seeing the relationship between life and God’s voice that is the expansive one.  Instead of that’s all it is, we should say, it’s all that -- more than we can comprehend.  At least we are on the right track.  That which will someday be born stirs within the cosmic egg, developing into something more like Christ.

I think God still has His prophets.  I hear people who claim to be prophets talking about “what I saw.”   I don’t pay much attention to them.  I listen for the ones who sound more like poets.  Their words may not be pleasant; they may drop like great hailstones, cold and hard.  They may burn white-hot as lightning and flatten me like thunder’s hammer.  But they are real and alive.  As a hungry traveler may catch the fragrance of quickened bread baking and know he is nearing home, we catch the aroma of life and know we are near the truth.  To the careful hearer and seeker, the voice of the prophet may be separated out from the cacophony of everyday chaos and turmoil.  

So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. (Genesis 2:19)

3 comments:

John Lien said...

Nice imagery. Thanks to you and GB and others introducing me to the concept (mystery) of the Word. I like to think about it often.

God spoke all into existence, and His Voice is speaking still.

The Word is being continuously spoken, keeping the Cosmos in existence and alive. That feels right.

mushroom said...

This is how A.W. Tozer said it:

One of the great realities with which we have to deal is the Voice of God in His world. The briefest and only satisfying cosmogony is this: "He spake and it was done." The why of natural law is the living Voice of God immanent in His creation. And this word of God which brought all worlds into being cannot be understood to mean the Bible, for it is not a written or printed word at all, but the expression of the will of God spoken into the structure of all things. This word of God is the breath of God filling the world with living potentiality. The Voice of God is the most powerful force in nature, indeed the only force in nature, for all energy is here only because the power-filled Word is being spoken.

John Lien said...

Yeah, that.