Coming to the limits of our understanding can be a great blessing. This is true in the natural world. Nobody fully understands light, yet we all enjoy the shining of the sun. We couldn’t survive without gravity, and yet very few of us could even begin to explain gravity.
We do not need to understand radio waves in order to listen to talk radio or our favorite music. Most people who have gardens would not be expected to be experts in botany.
The walk of faith, the life in Christ is similar. Our comprehensive knowledge is very limited.
We cannot truly say we even have “comprehensive knowledge” of God or Christ. We can have faith and yet know that we are severely limited in our understanding.
I heard this old quotation that captures what I am trying to say here: “I do not know how Bethlehem’s babe could in the godhead be. I only know that manger child has brought God’s love to me.”
There is some real wisdom in those two brief sentences. They capture how the mystery of God speaks to us and influences our lives — in ways beyond our comprehension.
The Apostle Paul offers this apt description of the pain and promise of our walk in Christ: “For now we see in a mirror— dimly — but then, face to face. Now I know in part — but then I shall know just as I also am known.”
In Jesus Christ, the love of God reaches out to touch and indwell our lives. We have questions like this: How can water, wine, bread and words have a life-changing and life-giving impact on our daily lives? Why would God speak in and through the life of a Jew born in the first century?
I speak from the perspective of those who trust in “the real presence” of Christ in Holy Communion. When we receive Communion we touch and taste that which eludes our grasp.
We cannot have full answers to those kinds of questions. We cannot fully comprehend why those things might be true. But we are loved by God. We are touched by God. God dwells within us. Water, wine, bread and words have been chosen as channels of God’s blessing and nourishment in your life and in mine.
We cannot fully understand any of these things. When coming to the promise and presence of God, we quickly reach the limits of our vision and our understanding. And yet, we are loved by God. We are loved by that which is absolute. We are held by that which is eternal and unconditional.
Singer/writer Don Henley wrote in one of his creative songs: “The more I know, the less I understand.” That statement reflects my experience of life in Christ.
At the end of the day, Christian faith is like falling in love. It is real. It is experienced all the time.
But we are speechless when we try to fully explain it.
The Rev. Larry Isbell is pastor of First Lutheran Church in Columbus. He can reached at [email protected].
