Reach.
Have you ever tried to navigate your way around your house in complete darkness?
Not the kind of darkness where you can just about make out objects and if you walk slowly you probably won't bump into anything. I'm talking about the kind of darkness where you aren't sure you even have your eyes open, and even though you can feel your eyelids moving nothing seems to change.
This is normally what it is like for me getting up in my house during the winter. I am always awake a long time before my wife and so I try not to disturb her. However, this entails getting out of the bedroom in complete darkness. Normally this is OK because I find a point of reference; my hand finds the end of the bed and so [even though I can not see it] I know what direction I need to go in and how many steps to take before I reach the door.
But there are times when I walk forward expecting to find the edge of the bed and it is not there! Have I walked too far, or in the wrong direction? I don't know. All of a sudden I have no choice but to grope around in the darkness hoping that my hands will bump into something so that I know where I am.
It is all very disconcerting to suddenly discover that where you are not where you thought you were.
Western culture has given us an image of God being 'up in heaven', but this is not the picture that we get from the Bible. There we encounter the idea that God is all around us. Not in some woolly new age kind of way, but in the sense that He is near us (we are in Him even before He comes into our lives). This is what Paul is alluding to here:
"God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.'" Acts 17:27-28
An encounter with Jesus in our 'darkness' suddenly gives us perspective. Then we find ourselves reaching out and finding God.
Not the kind of darkness where you can just about make out objects and if you walk slowly you probably won't bump into anything. I'm talking about the kind of darkness where you aren't sure you even have your eyes open, and even though you can feel your eyelids moving nothing seems to change.
This is normally what it is like for me getting up in my house during the winter. I am always awake a long time before my wife and so I try not to disturb her. However, this entails getting out of the bedroom in complete darkness. Normally this is OK because I find a point of reference; my hand finds the end of the bed and so [even though I can not see it] I know what direction I need to go in and how many steps to take before I reach the door.
But there are times when I walk forward expecting to find the edge of the bed and it is not there! Have I walked too far, or in the wrong direction? I don't know. All of a sudden I have no choice but to grope around in the darkness hoping that my hands will bump into something so that I know where I am.
It is all very disconcerting to suddenly discover that where you are not where you thought you were.
Western culture has given us an image of God being 'up in heaven', but this is not the picture that we get from the Bible. There we encounter the idea that God is all around us. Not in some woolly new age kind of way, but in the sense that He is near us (we are in Him even before He comes into our lives). This is what Paul is alluding to here:
"God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.'" Acts 17:27-28An encounter with Jesus in our 'darkness' suddenly gives us perspective. Then we find ourselves reaching out and finding God.
posted by Andrew at 8:38 am
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