Monday: Drunk . . . with God
WEEK 6
MONDAY
DRUNK . . . WITH GOD
Luke 11:9-13
We mentioned yesterday our Round Table Conferences, where we invite people of all faiths and of no faith to tell what their way of life is doing for them in experience. We urge upon them that no one argue, no one talk abstractly, no one preach at the rest of us, but that we simply tell how our way of life is working—what do we find in experience? When we say that, the climate changes, arguments and abstractions and idealisms are out—only finding counts. Those intoxicated with the wine of their own wordiness become sober and serious. And the verb “is” becomes all-important. There the sincere Christian is at home. It is our native air. We are in contact with the Word become flesh, and in us, in turn, that Word again becomes flesh in experience. We have something.
Non-Christians often interpret this fact of finding on the part of Christians in a very interesting way. One Muslim man said to me as we walked away from a Round Table Conference, “We Hindus and Mohammedans must have been more sincere and honest than you Christians.” When I asked him why he thought so, he replied, “Because we all said we had found nothing, but all you Christians said you had found something; therefore we must have been more honest and sincere than you were.” I replied, “That’s one interpretation. There is another possible one: Jesus is the Way. And when we come to him, we find.” We do. And the degree of the coming is the degree of the finding. It works.
God can give himself in Christ, not arbitrarily but because Jesus represents, in his own person, the reality about God. God is like Jesus. Therefore, when we come through him, we come through that which God can approve about Godself. Hence God gives himself. We find. And when we give ourselves wholly, we find wholly. The disciples appeared “drunk” at Pentecost; they were—drunk with God. They gave all and got all. We give lightly and are affected lightly. When we are all out in our giving, then God is all out in giving to us. We are filled with God’s Spirit. And the filling becomes an overflowing. The inflow becomes an outflow. We gush.
O Lord, I thank you that my seeking can become a finding and my finding becomes more finding. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I will take from God with both hands today; it’s all my heritage.