The Mysterious and the Good

"Clouds and darkness are round about Him.... Light is sown for the righteous...." Ps. 97:2a, 11a

"Course He isn't safe. But He is good." -C.S. Lewis

There are two things that we must never forget about God: His mysteriousness and His goodness. We are most forgetful of and frustrated by the former. We gladly seek the comforts of God only to find that resting in His secret place means dwelling in a shadow (Ps.91:1) and darkness (Ps. 18:11). God is light, and in Him dwells no darkness (I John 1:5), but darkness is where He dwells; not it in Him, but rather He in it. Thus, His ways are mysterious (Is. 55:8, 9; Rom. 11:33) and His light inaccessible (I Tim. 6:16). We often flounder at this: we would much rather have a God that we could easily categorize and thus easily predict. However, one of God's favorite past times is frustrating our assumptions, and He will continue to do so until we trust in His mystery.
God's goodness is more palatable than His mystery, but only after we water it down to the point of banality. We do acknowledge the light that He graciously sows for us, whether it be His word for guidance (Ps.119:105) or His Son for salvation (John 1:4); yet we do not seem to connect that we are given light because the world is dark, a darkness filled with terrors and terrified people. The light we are given is for our survival and the salvation of others. We are not on a sun-drenched vacation; we are pilgrims in an unholy land. God's goodness (which He freely gives because He is good) is not to be bottled up and horded, but broken and spilled out unto all. God is good, and good to us; but if we are to be like Him (I Peter 1:16), then we cannot keep that goodness, that light, to ourselves. Like our Father in Heaven has done for us, we too must spread the light as far as we can fling it.

-Jon Vowell

"...while ye have the light..."

"Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me." Ps. 55:5

"Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you; for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light." John 12:35-36

We err if we see the Christian life as all sunshine and roses. If we are not in a horror of great darkness right now, we are at least in a frustration of plain darkness, a seemingly endless waiting period where nothing seems to happen (except, perhaps, what you do not want to happen). God gives us light, such as His word (Ps. 119:105) and His Son (John 1:4-5), as well as His general revelations (Rom. 1:19-20). When the moments come that He enlightens our minds and illuminates our pathways, we must be sure to open our minds and hearts so as to close them again on the solid natures of His truth, beauty, and goodness. If we walk in the daylight flippantly, taking nothing that we see or hear to heart, then we will be dismayed in the night season. We can only be "the children of light" if while we have the light we believe in it.
This is not to say that there are moments when God is not with us. God is always with us (Matt. 28:20b). What happens is that there are times where God hides Himself from our view (e.g., John 12:36b - "When Jesus had said these things, he departed and did hide himself from them"). Where once His presence and purpose seemed so clear, now it has faded like a dream. The point is that we remain true to God and what He has revealed to us even and especially when He is hidden from us. There are stabs of light that pierce the darkness, pieces of Heaven that come raining down like manna in this vestibule of Hell that we call earth. While we have it, we may walk; when it goes, we must sit and wait. "Walk while ye have the light," for "he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth." Sitting and waiting is the hardest thing; it is the hardest thing to sit and trust in the light and what it has shown you while your immediate circumstances seem to mock your faith, and the only light that you have is what you received the last time you walked in the light. It is our lot, however, to walk in the light so that we may burn in the night. Whatever opportunities we have, however, to meet with the light, let us take them gladly and vigorously, like a traveller in the desert stumbling across an oasis. Let us fill up for our journey so that we may have for ourselves and for others that we meet along the way.

-Jon Vowell

God: The Summation of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness

"Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and shall feed on His faithfulness. Delight thyself also in the Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart." Ps. 37:3-4

To trust God and to desire God--these are the two most difficult and yet vitally necessary lessons that a Christian must learn. It can be easily argued that our entire lives on this earth (and perhaps throughout eternity) will be and are being defined by our learning to trust and delight in God and God alone. The scriptures seem to scream such a message from cover to cover: only God can be trusted and only God is to be desired.

Those facts are not arbitrary egotism on God's part. As the omniscient observer at infinity, only He can take in and account for the whole of everything in His thinking, and thus only His word can be trusted. In addition, as a being whose nature is defined as "the beauty of holiness" (i.e., the beauty of the complete picture of His qualities and character), only He is the sum of all perfection and good things, and thus only He is to be desired (see I Chr. 16:29; II Chr. 20:21; Ps. 29:2, 96:9, 110:3).

Because God is the all-knowing observer and the summation of all good things, to trust or desire anything else is a danger for us because we are leaving the higher for the lower, the all-knowing and all-beautiful for the less knowing and less beautiful. Such a transaction does damage to our souls because we are leaving off that which our souls truly need and long for: true guidance and true beauty. That is why God asks us to trust and delight only in Him; not to satiate His ego, but for the good of our souls.

-Jon Vowell