Through a glass darkly...

I know my wife better than anyone else does, and yet I will never know her fully. I learn about her every day from my what my children tell me and what she shows me in dealing with them.

Is my wife’s identity undermined or threatened by the fact that each of my children’s description of her will differ from the others? What about by the fact that my own description of her will differ much from theirs and also from that of her mother or friends? Or is it possible that these variations actually affirm and prove the rich reality of who she is?

The logical and necessary consequence of believing God wants personal relationship with each of us is the sometimes uncomfortable fact that we will not all see precisely the same things in Him or know Him in exactly the same ways or even through the same mechanisms or means of encounter.

This is not a threat to God’s Godness, but an exuberant endorsement of it. If any mere human can be frustratingly complex and unpredictable, why should we be surprised to find God is even more so?

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