The one I cannot think about
I thank you that you have answered me
And have become my salvation. Psalm 118:21
Read Luke 24:1—9
There is something wrong with the whole exercise if I am sitting here tonight thinking about Jesus. Thinking about him. Thoughts like this: he is not among the dead. Thinking that he is alive. Even the most alive of us all. And that his resurrection was not some freak occurrence, but the very outcome of who he was and what he was all about. All that he had spoken of. What could never actually be grasped until it happened. And even when it did happen, it could still not be grasped, really. Rather, it unleashed a torrent, a pulsing volume of thinking and re-thinking about all created life, such that I now have a New Testament to read, and it looks like it was written out of centuries of profound meditation. Yet it was all written by new Christians, all converted at the time of the events they describe! So what on earth could be wrong with sitting here and thinking about Jesus tonight?
Prayer
Dear Lord, what is wrong with thinking about you is that you are alive to my very thoughts. I can truly only ever speak to you. And listen to your voice. Listen to you. You must always be the subject, and me the object. Never again can I stand at a distance from you as though I can sum you up. When I speak to others I pray that you will give me a holy reverence, an awareness of your presence, even as we talk. If we talk of you. If we talk of anything. In my waking and in my sleeping let me never be free of your holy presence.