Saturday, June 16, 2018

Giving Voice to The Word

Sometimes revelation comes in subtle ways as if what I've been digesting is slowly burrowing its way through the muck and it finally finds Me there. At that point I realize that what I'm after is allowing the Word that has been planted there to be free and find expression.

That can be in the form of kindness, compassion, a hug or even just a smile.

But my struggle is giving Voice to that Word. It longs to be free. This is why we quote Scripture. It expresses what we wish to say in a fashion much better than we can ever formulate. From the outside, however, it may not mean the same thing as when we speak the Word it is packed with experience, with spiritual struggles, with our relationship with the text. For us there is a context and when we use that verse, that passage, that term, we are packing it full of meaning.

The flip side of that is the struggle to understand and then, once tasting of that understanding, we seek to give expression to what we've found and, ultimately, to get it out not only for our understanding but to share with others what we've found.

"Our food, whether fish or bread or any other kind of nourishment, is changed into human blood, into the person who consumes it. But in this case quite the opposite happens. The bread of life Himself changes the person who feeds on Him, transforms him and assimilates him to Himself." Cabasilas, The Life of Christ, 597.

These words hit home and tapped into that which I feel I am missing. Church, lately, feels like showtime and while enjoyable it is not enough. Something has been missing. It is not the church's fault. It is my hunger and it is my duty to seek out how to fill this hunger with real food so that when I do attend church I am not coming to get but, having already gotten, to give back, to share.

The other thing that hit me while reading this text is that Christ bore all things human unto Himself, we too are to do the same. We are to absorb, to carry one another, and to bring it into ourselves to lay it before Him Who is in us to transform it as He Himself transformed what he assumed. 

No comments: