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)
