Week 1—Thursday Hebrews 1:1-2
Week 1—THURSDAY
SEEING GOD THROUGH IMPERFECT MEDIA
We are considering how God could be revealed perfectly. We continue to look at the question of whether a book can be a perfect revelation. Words get meaning from the life that surrounds them. If I should use the word “home” before an audience, to some it would mean “heaven,” to some “hell,” according to the life which surrounded the word. Literature can never rise higher than life. For life puts content and meaning into the literature. Suppose God should give us a book from heaven with all God’s will written into it—would that be a perfect revelation of God? Hardly. For we would read into those words our highest experience of those words. I would see the word “love” in the book, and I would read into it my highest experience of love. But my highest experience of love is not love—it is my highest experience of love, which is partial, incomplete. I would see the word “purity” in the book, and I would read into it my highest experience of purity; but my highest experience of purity is not purity. I would see the word “God,” and I would read into it my highest experience of God; but my highest experience of God is not God.
I would pull these words to the level of my highest experience, and so would you, so the book would not be so much a revelation of God as a revelation of us. What then do we need for a perfect revelation of God? A life must come among us—a Divine Life, which will lift these words from the level to which we have dragged them and put a new content into them—a Divine Content through the Divine Illustration. We would then no longer see these words through what we are but through what God is. We think that has happened. A Life came among us and lived publicly for thirty-three years. We no longer see the word “love” in the light of our poor, partial love, but in the light of a Love that prayed for enemies upon a cross: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” The Word of love became flesh.
O, Father, we see you faintly and distortedly through the lattice of nature and through the lattice of your followers, but we begin to see you through the Life of your Son. And what we see sets our hearts on fire to see more and yet more. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My light may be poor, but it will be light, not darkness.