Again, Joseph Sittler on theology.
Theology is not just a church discipline or a discipline that is exercised by people who are religious. Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Anaximander were all theologians - people who wondered, to put it in Anaximander's terms, "What is that thing which is before everything, from which everything comes, and to which everything proceeds?"
Who is not a theologian? A walk out under the stars pulls a person into a great wonder about what's up there...or how did this all come into being...or is there life beyond here? Those kinds of questions and many others often make us wonder about how it all came to be...what caused it? Not even Darwin took on these questions as such. He started with a something that moves and changes and becomes what we see today. Sittler is commenting on a discipline that is set ablaze by the wonder of nothing at all and then something just as familiar as today. From this grand sense of wonder, people turn to the scriptures and the writing in those pages give a bit of direction to our wondering. And yet, even with a book in hand, we wonder about the stories presented there and how they have meaning for people like us. Being people who wonder about what was before everything use a variety of resources to help us wonder even more. In some ways, we begin to settle into our ideas about what is and how we come to this place. Then again, many of us continue to wonder and that is not a frightening thing to do. In fact, it helps us turn more and more to this power we have come to call God - before all things...with all things...for all things.
Connection: Never cease to wonder and in the wondering of the day, find a place to rest and pursue a way of peace.
Lord of What is Beyond and Yet So Close, when we long for an understanding of this life we live help us to boldly open doors and then wrestle with every story that attempts to become our story. In the midst of all of that, we may come to see the eternal face of your creative power. Amen.
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