Selwyn moves onto another ‘thing we must do as participants in God’s big story is to enter into mystery and celebrate it’.
He starts today’s study with: “What do I mean when I say we must enter into mystery? Let me put it like this: most of us, when we are faced with mystery, instead of entering into it and rejoicing that God knows more than we do, attempt to resolve the mystery by reducing it to manageable proportions. Mystery erodes our sense of competence so we struggle to explain it, to rationalise it.
… God allows things to happen to us that have no apparent explanation, so we accept and deal with whatever God is doing with absolute trust.”
God is all powerful and always good, holy and just.
The hardest statement for a young intellectual of today, to say, is: “I don’t know”. There is a prevalent form of scientific rationalism which promotes the view that although we may not know all the facts at the present moment, further research will eventually lead to a full explanation. In regard to accidents, the only answer to be given by such a view is that there is no reason, as to why it happened – call it ‘fate’ – call it ‘destiny’ - say that it was, simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever, you call it – never look towards God for an answer! This attitude is very common in my ‘western’ culture.
Our life is one continuous story of our interaction with the one, and only, all-powerful God; Jesus is calling us into an eternal relationship with Him. The things that happen to us, the people we meet and the things we do; are all interconnected to the single, core theme of God’s story: that is, how we respond to God’s love as shown to us by Jesus on His cross. Our response, illustrates to ourselves, the nature of our relationship with Jesus. This relationships determines our eternal future.
Entering into mystery
Selwyn moves onto another ‘thing we must do as participants in God’s big story is to enter into mystery and celebrate it’.
He starts today’s study with: “What do I mean when I say we must enter into mystery? Let me put it like this: most of us, when we are faced with mystery, instead of entering into it and rejoicing that God knows more than we do, attempt to resolve the mystery by reducing it to manageable proportions. Mystery erodes our sense of competence so we struggle to explain it, to rationalise it.
… God allows things to happen to us that have no apparent explanation, so we accept and deal with whatever God is doing with absolute trust.”
God is all powerful and always good, holy and just.
The hardest statement for a young intellectual of today, to say, is: “I don’t know”. There is a prevalent form of scientific rationalism which promotes the view that although we may not know all the facts at the present moment, further research will eventually lead to a full explanation. In regard to accidents, the only answer to be given by such a view is that there is no reason, as to why it happened – call it ‘fate’ – call it ‘destiny’ - say that it was, simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever, you call it – never look towards God for an answer! This attitude is very common in my ‘western’ culture.
Our life is one continuous story of our interaction with the one, and only, all-powerful God; Jesus is calling us into an eternal relationship with Him. The things that happen to us, the people we meet and the things we do; are all interconnected to the single, core theme of God’s story: that is, how we respond to God’s love as shown to us by Jesus on His cross. Our response, illustrates to ourselves, the nature of our relationship with Jesus. This relationships determines our eternal future.