Week 1—Saturday 1 Corinthians 2:9-10
Week 1—SATURDAY
THE SILENCE OF ETERNITY HAS BEEN BROKEN
We come now to gather together what we have been saying this week. We must reject as inadequate or inaccurate the attempts to find God through nature—the nature worshipers; the attempt to find God within ourselves—the “I” worshipers; the attempt to find God through teachers, gurus, priests—the human worshipers; the attempt to find God in legalism—the written law worshipers; the attempt to find God in slogans and affirmation—the cult of the Positive, the Positive worshipers; the attempt to find God in the quiet of submissiveness—the worshipers of Silence, of Quietism. In any of these you may find glimpses of God, but if you are to see God face to face you must see God in the face of Jesus Christ. For Jesus is God approachable, God available, God simplified, God lovable. The Word has become flesh.
There was, and is, no other way for God to be revealed except in understandable terms, human terms. God had to show his character where your character and mine are wrought out, namely, in the stream of human history. The Word had to become flesh, or else not be the Word; it would be something else—words!
Lao-tse, the great Chinese philosopher said: “The Word that can be uttered is not the Divine word; that Word is Silence.” He is right, in a way, for the Divine Word cannot be uttered. That would be the Word become word. But the alternative is not silence. Lao-tse had to say the alternative was silence for he knew of no Word become flesh, knew no Jesus Christ. So it had to be silence. But “the silence of eternity” has been broken, it has been interrupted by love, by the appearance of Incarnate Love—Jesus.
The statement of Lao-tse, himself a philosopher, that the Word that can be uttered is not the Divine Word, sweeps from the board of adequacy all attempts to utter the Divine Word through philosophy, laws, reason, and theology. They are all the Word become word. The only method of revelation is the Word become flesh.
O God, my Father, I thank you that when all other ways were inadequate, you opened the way to us. When we couldn’t come to you, you came to us, came to us in lowly form, human form. And now we can come to you through the Way. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The Silence of Eternity shall become revealed in me today.