Hmm, not really sure I am sticking to topic these last few posts…but I HAVE been reading the daily readings and trying my best. To top it off, my kids are playing all around me right now which makes writing a difficult task…so I pray I make sense of my random thoughts!
Yesterday’s reading: John 1 which talks about the Word becoming flesh. Some of my favorite writing in the Bible, but I admit my mind has a very hard time wrapping around this concept. That something abstract like a word could become real, tangible, vulnerable, pierceable…that a word could become some one that has feelings, becomes angry and weeps bitterly. I just do not get it…I mean both the “how” and the “why” I just do not understand.
There is so much packed into John 1. I remember studying this in Bible Study Fellowship years ago…and being overwhelmed at what John was saying, how he was saying it…the enormity of what he was trying to say. This one chapter I feel could be studied for months!
As I read down over it I saw another verse that jumped out at me again. Patti Pierce from Wellspring used this verse when she spoke at an event at Sanctuary. Her lesson: that Jesus is asking us what our deepest desires are, those ones that hide out under the surface of your desire to be married, have kids, be successful in a career, to be rich and famous, etc.
I LOVE this…that Jesus does not tell them anything, but seeks to draw out of them something deep inside their souls with …with a question. I love this so much because it seems that questions in and of themselves are some what being attacked by the Christian culture. I see this with Rob Bell’s book I keep mentioning, Love Wins. I see this when I look at how Christians attack counselors – mainstream and Christian alike – for saying that the idea of compassionate reflecting back with questions to the counseled is not biblical.
Not biblical? Really? Isn’t this what Jesus does here? Isn’t that what God does with Job and with Moses at the burning bush, and Paul when he has a run in with Jesus on the road? This is what God does in the Garden after Adam and Eve sin, is it not?
I might be wrong, but the art of great conversation is learning how to ask POIGNANT questions that get the other to think for themselves, to reflect deeply on their own thoughts and souls. I KNOW that this is the best tool I have for being a parent: not just telling my kids to not do something, but asking them why it is not okay to do something or how they would feel if what they just did was done to them.
Questions make us uncomfortable, maybe this is why we seek to avoid them. They – the questions – take the blanket off us, the one that is way too small to begin with. We don’t notice that it is too small, but we desperately try to pull and kick and stretch it to fit our adult frame even though it is just a kid sized one. They – the questions – reveal to us that we don’t have all the answers…that we are not all powerful and in control of our lives as we would like to think. They – the questions – do not allow us to point the finger at others, but at ourselves…to turn that outward reflection inwards….and it makes us squirm as we realize the true size of our blanket.
I see this when I look at the question John’s disciples return with. Since they, the disciples were not really sure what they were looking for, since the question Jesus asked them made them stop and think and really ponder “what they were looking for”… and since they could not answer the question for themselves…they did the next best thing. They asked him a question right back, “Where are you staying?” They didn’t know what it was about this Jesus guy that interested them, what stirred in their souls when He asked them the question they asked him — but their souls were stirred and it was enough that they wanted to see what it was that He was doing, what he was doing that was so different from anything or any one else they had ever met. They were not sure how to answer the question, but they wanted to see if Jesus was able to help them begin to answer this question.
Jesus’ reply? Not to scold them for not immediately having the answer, not to shame them for not knowing the bible enough or the laws written there.
His answer: to simply invite them to come along and see where he was staying, to see what he was doing…to be an observer of His work so that they would “see” what he was about. He knew that in doing so, that in giving them time to discover for themselves “what they were looking for” that they would eventually be able to come up with an answer. Yet, there would be many, many more questions He would ask them along the way in order to help draw them out of themselves.
So, how about you….
