This world we have been born to is more terrible and beautiful than any imagination.
Why do we have eyes to see color? A brilliant palette with which all creation has been painted. And why should we see it? Drops of rain explode light into a rainbow bowed over the earth. Why? Why should this splendor be wasted on people too weak to trust you? What is the color of ultraviolet or infrared light? Our visible spectrum is just like our existence. It's a glimpse on the median of infinity. Looking either direction there are colors unimaginable. Evidence of an invisible God who has revealed himself in the small sliver of our existence, still too great and complex and patterned for our comprehension.
This life is just a sliver of light. A sliver of the true inexplicable magic of truth. An evidence that we can only dimly perceive. We translate that invisible spectrum into what we can see, as our gracious God translated himself into mankind; the word become flesh.
When one opens his eyes, everything is a reflection of the God. Mighty God. The best utterances of splendor we can only hope to lay like gravel at his feet to walk on. The thunderous utterance and fire and crackling smoke and tender whisper and weeping man. Resplendent. Everything is ordered, woven like a deep and unimaginable pattern.
Imagine peering through the eyepiece of a telescope, perceiving endless galaxies of scale beyond imagination. Then quickly take your eye of the telescope and place it over a microscope and witness the endless scale sink into infinity. There is no scope, no edge we can see. We are mankind on an island in infinity, loved by a God who met us here in our infirmity.
Why does a butterfly bat its wings when it lands on a flower? I suppose there is some reason? But why does it appear to me so lovely? A peaceful fanning of its colorful delicacy. There is no reason for me to care about it. No reason for me to take delight in the electric green bug crawling across the velvet brilliance of a zinnia. No reason for me to feel staggered by the dashes of red cardinals streaking across green grass and see tomatoes redden from a small green to a plump ruby color. To see a seed explode into leaves of okra and watch the flowering blossom of jalepenos emerge into the searing kiss of its fruit.
The universe is staggering. The deeper we peer, the more its complexity and beauty and elegance and richness unfold on itself like an undulating explosion. It never grows simpler, but reality endless outgrows our best metaphors and cleverest phrases. Our imitations of reality are broken and endlessly striving for the glory we know exists.
Why should blue be blue? Why should an atmosphere grow deep blue and grass rich greens? Why is it such a pleasant complement to the profusion of color we can behold? Why shouldn't our eyes have missed the color of the skies completely? We see more than we need to. We see less than we want to. Why this situation?
Dear God. This universe is more than I can imagine. It is beyond imagination. It has grown beyond our creativity. It has outpaced our science, infinitely expanding as it is.
Why have you given us this striking wonder? Dear Lord, we don't deserve it. Why have you given us this theater to exist in? Our endless rebellion and your endless pursuit? It is the same story, played by countless actors on a stage as wondrous as our aspirations. We long for your perfection. And on our better days, we glimpse it.
I am rubble and dust. You know my frame LORD. You scooped me from this dirt and mud and breathed in me life.
I don't even know what that means, exactly. But my, how I know it.
I did nothing to deserve this. Nothing.
No comments:
Post a Comment