also
"The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word."
Hebrews 1:3
Have you ever read anything from scripture that depicts Jesus to be as beautiful as this sentence implies?
Yesterday, Victor and I decided that, in order to ease the discomforts of this temporary long-distance relationship, the two of us would read a bit of the Bible every day and then we could talk about our thoughts, however much or little, at the end of the day, hopefully to spawn more productive conversation than the mournful, "I miss you." Together, we chose to read the book of Hebrews from beginning to end and today's assignment was Chapter 1.
While my intensive background research and somewhat educated theories were impressive enough for any inductive Bible study (at least to me), it is so completely and utterly amazing to me that the verse that has impacted me the most is the only one that Victor found so captivating: verse 3. I don't think you understand. I spent about thirty to forty minutes reading the first chapter, deciding it wasn't enough and reading a bit of the second chapter, browsing online through wikipedia about the historical context of the book, reading different pages regarding the theories of its authorship and the conditions under which the book was written, learning that it was written in Greek and that its references are based on the Koine Greek translation of the Septuagint despite its Semitic book title, and in the end all of my analysis and research (wonderful as it may be), pales in comparison to the effect that the beautiful words above have had on me.
Maybe I should explain.
I believe that it is always important for me to periodically reflect on the first three things about God that comes to me. The reason why is that there are so many impressive and distinct attributes about God that I feel it's impossible to fully experience any of them in a lifetime, and even more impossible to even dabble in experiencing ALL of them at one time. Therefore, I find it to be helpful to do this little activity in order to illuminate for myself what type of journey and what kind of life God may be taking me through at the present time.
Let's just say that the last time I did this little activity of mine was quite awhile ago.
According to the last time I checked, I experienced God in either a somewhat technical manner or in a completely musical fashion. Without needing to look through them, I know that the archives of this livejournal holds essays upon essays of entries about God as I experienced him in a particular passage through a detailed dissection of its words, or through the moving lyrics of a newly found song. And boy, do I love reading and skimming through some of those entries. I don't know if this feeling comes across to anybody else browsing through my masterpieces, but I know that when I read through those entries, I can see and remember a fiery and passionate girl sitting before her computer, typing furiously as ideas and words and tunes flowed alternately through her excited brain. I got a writer's high from composing and editing all of those productions, and reviewing them until I had just the right nuances and words could bring me pleasure to no end because it was a way in which I praised and worshiped God for who He created me to be and for what He allowed me to glimpse.
And then one day, it stopped.
It was a gradual sort of halt, one that was difficult to notice. So many changes were happening that it was difficult to attribute its ceasing to any one factor; I had moved away, gone to college, gotten a new boyfriend, tried applying for jobs, started serving in new ministries, met a number of people, and begun living with a roommate. My scientifically-trained mind planted in a scientifically-oriented community told me that there were too many uncontrolled factors to take in, and so analysis was futile and I would have to resort to wondering for a long time. Well, now I think I might have it partially figured out.
Five years ago, my days consisted of going to classes that emphasized having only one correct answer, practicing and playing a number of different instruments and singing in the shower, being in a Christian community that strongly endorsed out loud a nit-picky study of sentences in the Bible, yearning for the husband that I prayed would one day come, and reading Christian books that often talked about the importance of a coherent and sound theological faith, oftentimes for the sake of apologetic study. As such, I felt that God was the God of right answers, the God of praise songs, the God of promised companionship, the God of precise interpretations, and the God of proofs.
Well, guess what. It has been five years since that time and, though Jesus may be the same yesterday today and forever, I am a different girl.
While before I could barely boil or scramble an egg to save my life, I am now paranoid and specific about whether a recipe calls for a room-temperature or a refrigerated egg to ensure that my souffle will, indeed, rise. While before I thought of the point-and-shoot when the word "camera" flashed through my head, I am now beginning to understand how different ISO levels and focus settings can drastically impact the outcome of an image and, as is often the case, the way a moment is savored. While before I conceptualized art as paintings of bowls of fruit that I never understood (I especially never understood WHY you would paint them), I am now ritualistically stalking the blogs of interior designers and scavenging used bookstores for catalogs of visual pieces from eras long forgotten in an attempt to satiate my eyes' need for pretty things. While before I only read Christian books that taught us how we ought to live, I am now also reading the poetic prose of novels depicting other lives that could be lived and I am gobbling them with the same voracity with which I devour ice cream.
And now, God has also become to me the God of peculiar and individual cravings, the God of delicately captured memories, the God of multi-dimensional creativity, and the God of heterogeneous stories.
So what does this ridiculously long explanation have to do with the passage above? You see, I had been reading the passage with the analytical and scientific mind of my seventeen-year-old self when God has already revealed so many other, lovely sides of Himself. Victor, however, pointed out to me the poetry in this verse and, after thinking a moment about the exquisiteness of it all, I realized that if I were to think of the first three adjectives that come to my mind about God right now, beautiful would, indeed, come first.
And the most elegantly-crafted thing to me about this moment is that He used the partner that He has personally chosen for me, one whose existence was not-so-blissfully unknown to me five years prior to today, and allowed this hand-picked individual to draw back the curtain and reveal to me the very winsome and beautiful Lover that I had accidentally hidden behind my memories of the past.
Hebrews 1:3
Have you ever read anything from scripture that depicts Jesus to be as beautiful as this sentence implies?
Yesterday, Victor and I decided that, in order to ease the discomforts of this temporary long-distance relationship, the two of us would read a bit of the Bible every day and then we could talk about our thoughts, however much or little, at the end of the day, hopefully to spawn more productive conversation than the mournful, "I miss you." Together, we chose to read the book of Hebrews from beginning to end and today's assignment was Chapter 1.
While my intensive background research and somewhat educated theories were impressive enough for any inductive Bible study (at least to me), it is so completely and utterly amazing to me that the verse that has impacted me the most is the only one that Victor found so captivating: verse 3. I don't think you understand. I spent about thirty to forty minutes reading the first chapter, deciding it wasn't enough and reading a bit of the second chapter, browsing online through wikipedia about the historical context of the book, reading different pages regarding the theories of its authorship and the conditions under which the book was written, learning that it was written in Greek and that its references are based on the Koine Greek translation of the Septuagint despite its Semitic book title, and in the end all of my analysis and research (wonderful as it may be), pales in comparison to the effect that the beautiful words above have had on me.
Maybe I should explain.
I believe that it is always important for me to periodically reflect on the first three things about God that comes to me. The reason why is that there are so many impressive and distinct attributes about God that I feel it's impossible to fully experience any of them in a lifetime, and even more impossible to even dabble in experiencing ALL of them at one time. Therefore, I find it to be helpful to do this little activity in order to illuminate for myself what type of journey and what kind of life God may be taking me through at the present time.
Let's just say that the last time I did this little activity of mine was quite awhile ago.
According to the last time I checked, I experienced God in either a somewhat technical manner or in a completely musical fashion. Without needing to look through them, I know that the archives of this livejournal holds essays upon essays of entries about God as I experienced him in a particular passage through a detailed dissection of its words, or through the moving lyrics of a newly found song. And boy, do I love reading and skimming through some of those entries. I don't know if this feeling comes across to anybody else browsing through my masterpieces, but I know that when I read through those entries, I can see and remember a fiery and passionate girl sitting before her computer, typing furiously as ideas and words and tunes flowed alternately through her excited brain. I got a writer's high from composing and editing all of those productions, and reviewing them until I had just the right nuances and words could bring me pleasure to no end because it was a way in which I praised and worshiped God for who He created me to be and for what He allowed me to glimpse.
And then one day, it stopped.
It was a gradual sort of halt, one that was difficult to notice. So many changes were happening that it was difficult to attribute its ceasing to any one factor; I had moved away, gone to college, gotten a new boyfriend, tried applying for jobs, started serving in new ministries, met a number of people, and begun living with a roommate. My scientifically-trained mind planted in a scientifically-oriented community told me that there were too many uncontrolled factors to take in, and so analysis was futile and I would have to resort to wondering for a long time. Well, now I think I might have it partially figured out.
Five years ago, my days consisted of going to classes that emphasized having only one correct answer, practicing and playing a number of different instruments and singing in the shower, being in a Christian community that strongly endorsed out loud a nit-picky study of sentences in the Bible, yearning for the husband that I prayed would one day come, and reading Christian books that often talked about the importance of a coherent and sound theological faith, oftentimes for the sake of apologetic study. As such, I felt that God was the God of right answers, the God of praise songs, the God of promised companionship, the God of precise interpretations, and the God of proofs.
Well, guess what. It has been five years since that time and, though Jesus may be the same yesterday today and forever, I am a different girl.
While before I could barely boil or scramble an egg to save my life, I am now paranoid and specific about whether a recipe calls for a room-temperature or a refrigerated egg to ensure that my souffle will, indeed, rise. While before I thought of the point-and-shoot when the word "camera" flashed through my head, I am now beginning to understand how different ISO levels and focus settings can drastically impact the outcome of an image and, as is often the case, the way a moment is savored. While before I conceptualized art as paintings of bowls of fruit that I never understood (I especially never understood WHY you would paint them), I am now ritualistically stalking the blogs of interior designers and scavenging used bookstores for catalogs of visual pieces from eras long forgotten in an attempt to satiate my eyes' need for pretty things. While before I only read Christian books that taught us how we ought to live, I am now also reading the poetic prose of novels depicting other lives that could be lived and I am gobbling them with the same voracity with which I devour ice cream.
And now, God has also become to me the God of peculiar and individual cravings, the God of delicately captured memories, the God of multi-dimensional creativity, and the God of heterogeneous stories.
So what does this ridiculously long explanation have to do with the passage above? You see, I had been reading the passage with the analytical and scientific mind of my seventeen-year-old self when God has already revealed so many other, lovely sides of Himself. Victor, however, pointed out to me the poetry in this verse and, after thinking a moment about the exquisiteness of it all, I realized that if I were to think of the first three adjectives that come to my mind about God right now, beautiful would, indeed, come first.
And the most elegantly-crafted thing to me about this moment is that He used the partner that He has personally chosen for me, one whose existence was not-so-blissfully unknown to me five years prior to today, and allowed this hand-picked individual to draw back the curtain and reveal to me the very winsome and beautiful Lover that I had accidentally hidden behind my memories of the past.