“For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not that just beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-by-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars but in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle we really get.” – Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
We sit squarely in the middle of Holy Week, the midpoint of Palm Sunday and Good Friday. If we were walking with the original disciples, we might be standing next to Jesus, we could speak with him, we could have spent time with God. There is a sense of awe in this idea for me. That our God knew that we needed to experience him, to behold the miracle of him, so that we could each have a relationship with him.
Yesterday my friend Kathy shared a story about a cat named Bailey who would cry and mew even after her owner had filled her bowl with food. One day the owner knelt down with the cat, after filling her bowl, and sat with Bailey. And she began to eat. The food alone was not what Bailey wanted, she had wanted her master’s attention, she had wanted love and relationship.
Jesus is the pinnacle of God reaching out to each of us, again and again, in the hopes of sharing His love. When word alone was not enough, when prophets, when signs were not enough, God kept trying. God keeps trying. We never quite grasped the enormity of God’s love, the tenderness of His message in the Old Testament. We were too afraid, to focused on upholding the covenant, too worried about earthly legalities to understand it. So, as a loving master, God came to us as Jesus, to sit with us, to eat with us, to be near, and to show us his love.
I stand in awe of this today, and every day.
And now for the Wednesday Wanderings Linky Party!
The simple rules:
1. If you post something, please stop by and leave a comment on the 2 people that posted before you.
2. Please stop by “On Wings and Waves” and say hi to Kristen 🙂
3. Please share links from your blog that you haven’t shared here before.
4. Please grab the Wednesday Wanderings button and share it in your post so other people can join in the fun.
Let’s get linking!