“Of
Things Not Seen”
Dear
Church,
I
have to admit—I’ve really, really loved our time going through the book of
Revelation so far! It’s an exciting book
to try to understand and decode, especially because, paradoxically, we were
never meant to understand it as Gentiles!
That
does mean, though, that I do spend a lot of time trying to prove (in a sense)
the commentary that I am making upon the text.
I have to take care that my explanation and interpretation do not turn
into dogma or, worse, attempts to prove the unprovable.
Because
that is what faith is, in the end, right?
The unprovable? That almost
mystical boundary where proof stops and hope begins?
The
Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard is famous for his notion of us as
Christians needing to take a leap of faith—that is, ultimately, reason and
logic have their day but can only take us so far because there is so much more
to God’s nature and creation that we still do not understand and that we must
place our trust in the unseen in order to live as Christians.
Or,
as the Bible puts it elegantly and simply in Hebrews 11, “faith is the
assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen.” (NRSV)
It can be a tough thing to wrap our minds around, the idea that no matter how much we want to, we cannot simply prove God’s existence through a simple equation or a series of proofs. Instead, God’s existence is indeed all about faith, and about the vision to see God’s presence all around you. This is a lesson that I find myself continually learning throughout this sermon series!
Where
has God’s presence been in your life that perhaps might remain unseen to
you? What have you hoped for in the
past, without realizing that it was there the whole time?
Yours
in Christ,
Pastor
Eric
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