Finding Christ in the kaleidoscope.

I have spent the last ten hours reading the New Testament. My eyes hurt. Also, I'm a little frightened.

Reading these words as though they might be true is wholly different than reading them as though they are. I have read them many, many times before. But never considered their import within the context of Reality. Let me tell you something,--as I give God His power back, as I relinquish my own, and do as Lindell suggests in accepting that there are things that I do not understand, I become terrified.

This is no God I can own. Not one that I can mold. His power is wholly Other from the realm in which I work and live. As I read Acts and Romans today, understanding, maybe for the first time, the implications, I kept thinking..."This is no faith for the timid."

I understand now what people refer to when they talk about trembling before the Lord.

And I began to understand what it means to be Chosen. The meaning of Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" slams into me. I've read that sermon so many times, it's one of my favorite spiritual writings. But today, I saw the process in a way that I haven't seen it before.

By God's grace, I understood. By God's grace, I accepted. God is great. Not in the "man, spaghettios are really great with chocolate milk" kinda way (though they are), but great. As in, great, and terrible, and awe-filled, and considerable. And I don't know why I should have come to feel this way, but that is part also of His Greatness.

All day long in my reading, and even now as I write this blog, I continually need to get up, and take a lap around the house. The ideas that filled me with frustration are now realizations that fill me with awe. I get a glimpse. I understand, even if only for a moment. And I think to myself..."Holy mother, but if that's true..." A sick, overwhelmed feeling rises in my stomach, and (at the risk of a shocking level of self-disclosure), I feel a pull to my knees. The only response that I have to this new vision of divinity, is worship. The sentence concludes, but if that is true, then I now serve a God of unimaginable power.

His love is not lost on me. But I serve a God of unimaginable power. A God who transcends time. And space. A God who can change death for life. My stomach doesn't feel so good.

I wonder if I'm losing touch with reality. Even as I agree to accept the inadequacy of my own logic, I can't help asking, "Why me? Why should I understand, and not others?" Is their logic better than mine? Am I suspending what's True, to explore what is not?

No, I don't think so. We all stand in our own place within the circle. We all judge some things to be True, and others not. I have just as much a right as any to discern my own way. And by Grace, I accept the way that I'm given.

As I read, my life comes up to meet me. Events, and people, and feelings all slide around one another, forming first one pattern, and then another, and another before finally falling into the most beautiful whole. "For God's gifts and his call are irrevocable."

God is great.