Infinite God, from eternity past, creating, with the Cross in sight, entering into time. The Timeless one creating time – imagining the idea, making it so, then sustaining it with his own will and thought, carrying forward all of history to its great and glorious end: the real beginning.
I am a believer. That’s not to say that I believe in anything – quite the opposite. In most ways, I am a skeptic – an atheist, even. That’s just to say, there are a great many gods that I don’t believe in, and I do not like to be made a fool.
Yet, there is Jesus, and when I consider him – when I look back across history into His face, I see more than a mere caricature: I meet a person – flesh and blood. Jesus, as a person, is unshakable, and his radical life is the sort that simply doesn’t make sense outside of a certain context, and that’s where everything gets weird.
I don’t begin to suggest that the pieces all fall together neatly: the infinite as finite, and Spirit as flesh is confusing enough to wrap ones mind around, but then three as one – even if a scientific model can be conceived of – when it works itself out into daily life is just hard to get one’s brain around. So I doubt, but then I always just slide back towards Jesus. Jesus doesn’t just love me, but in the pages of the book & in the lives of people who really know Him I see again & again that His love unfolds in ways I’d never invent myself. Jesus is very real.
I suspect it is just a reflection of divine creativity, after-all, and creativity doesn’t always make easy sense. To consider an infinite God, from eternity past, creating a universe which He knows full well will turn away, but that even in that turning He will compose a glorious story with a beautiful end (which is the actual beginning). A baby, growing in Godliness like a normal man, carrying forward history itself by his own will. That’s creative – God knows, I would’ve never thought of it.
And that’s the beauty of it all: God doesn’t think, or act like me. Yet I am called, as much as I am able & even more than that, to think God’s thoughts, & pursue growth into doing the sorts of things that He did, does, & promises to still do.
God is creative, overflowing with the new, doing things we’d never thought or imagined. God gave us law, but being a creative god, not as mere rules by which to judge us – a creative god like our God makes rules to not only protect, but to draw us to the rule-giver. For a creative god, law & grace go hand-in-hand – one unfolding into the other! Law open our eyes, & grace is there in all its beauty: Jesus!
Every step along the way in the Christian faith is like this: to grow in moral excellence, is to recognize your failure even more fully. Every step into repentance, is another opportunity to repent, but this isn’t groveling, as the act of turning reveals not to a mere judge, but our Father – adopting us, calling us out from what we were to something bigger, & calling us His own.
Let the mystery of walking with God ever continue to astound us! So be it!
*note: the approximate image or Jesus posted above is created via a computer with artificial intelligence designed by Dutch artist Bas Uterwijk by scanning in numerous early portraits of Jesus, combined with information about early middle-eastern Israelites. Though not a portrait of the actual Jesus, it gives us a closer idea of what Jesus would have likely looked like. And I liked the picture.
BELIEVER, Husband, Father, Son, Pastor, Songwriter, Musician, Producer, Worshiper, Thinker, Creative
