A Season of Epiphanies

In some ways retirement has brought me into a season of epiphanies.  New ways of thinking about the way God is experienced in the world have shattered my theological comfort zone.  For so long, maybe a lifetime, my thoughts about God have been confined within the framework of the church.  In these latter years I have come to a place of understanding that God is not defined or confined by the church, but is defined and revealed both in church and creation.  While the church still stands as a sentinel of the holy in our culture, it is also true that the earth and all that is a part of it points to the holy in our midst as well.

 

In the ninth chapter of John there is an incredible story of a man blind from birth being healed of his blindness.  The Word begins with the words, "As he   (Jesus) walked along, He saw a man blind from birth..." (Acts (9:1)  It was not a carpeted floor upon which Jesus walked, but a dirty dusty road.  And when He started the miracle of healing blindness, He used spit and dirt to make mud and with dirty soiled hands rubbed it on the unseeing eyes, telling the man, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam." (Acts 9:7)  No smell of incense was in the air, just the smell of wet dirt.  And, so the man went, put water on the spit and dirt, and blinked himself into sight.

What we seldom think about was not only created and called good by the Creator God, but has been so shaped by divine hands that it can only be called holy.  The parts of the creation are used for holy purposes and reveal the presence and the power of the holy one in our midst.  When we open sighted eyes and look around, what is holy unfolds before us.  How sad that we have lost our eyes to see.