"Our minds are constantly trying to bring God down to our level rather than letting him lift us into levels of which we were not previously capable." I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with that sentence even before finished reading it; and then nodding in full affirmation once I had read it through, and thought about it. Our capacity for life, for love, for God, is not so much a given finitude, nor an inevitable constraint of limits due to our incapacity as human beings; it is our anxious clinging to the familiar, our privileging of our past experience as criterion for what is possible, real and significant. There is comfort in reaching a plateau with the hard work and the upward climb behind us; the temptation to settle for what we have, to settle where we are, to settle in the now and allow the present to determine the future. The known is secure; the familiar is reassuring; and both these attractive complacencies remove from our lives one of the essentials of faith, risk.
Christian Wiman, quoted above, goes on to say something which is crucial for our spiritual health and human fulfilment: "What might it mean to be drawn into meanings that, in some profound and necessary sense, shatter us? This is what it means to love." To love God, to love another person, to love people, to love the world, and yes, to truly and completely and honestly love ourselves, are risks which carry within them not only the potential but the certainty of loss, pain, suffering and wounds, maybe even death. Those same risks carry within them not only the potential but the certainty of gain, joy, companionship and healing. And therein lies the choice, insulated safety with the familiar, or exposure to risk by being open to that which might shatter us, the transcendent.
At least that's what it would be like if it weren't for that mysterious, disruptive, compassionately sovereign and unpredictably tough movement in our hearts and in the world that we call grace, the grace of God. "There but for the grace of God go I" is familiar cliche. Just as true to life, and far less comforting is the confession, "Here but for the grace of God I would stay". To add cliche to cliche, old John Newton knew a thing or two when he wrote, ''Twas grace that brought me safe thus far / and grace will lead me home." And home isn't here, home isn't what we merely settle for, or settle into. Home is where God is taking us, and the journey isn't finished, the destination isn't reached. Instead of bringing God down to our level, God calls us to follow to levels beyond our present capacity, and God draws us into meanings that will shatter us because that is what love does. And in that creative process the shattering allows us to grow out of the carapaces of limiting habit, complacent achievement and comforting safety. That Love which calls for an answering, risk-taking love draws us out of the known to the unknown, out of security to risk, and out of contentment with stagnation to drink at the wells of that living water which is inexhaustible, life-giving and will sustain us on the way home. And in all the senses that matter, the true home of the human heart is in God, in whose image we are created, and into whose eternal love we are called.
This photo of Scheihallion was taken at Easter when we were on holiday at Loch Rannoch. The cloud obscures much of the mountain, but shows enough to tempt the climber. My son Andrew and I climbed it later that day, and neither of us climb Munros often enough for it to be a dawdle! But the view from the top, the exhilaration of climbing, the shared flask of coffee, the humbling awareness of those much fitter than us who passed us on the way up, and the long descent with legs beginning to ache but an inner glow of gladness, made for a satisfying day. And no amount of viewing with binoculars or photographing this majestic Scottish mountain from the safety of distance compares with the hard work of climbing it, encountering it, and allowing it to become part of the air we breathe and the memories that make us who we are.
"Our minds are constantly trying to bring God down to our level rather than letting him lift us into levels of which we were not previously capable."
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