We continue to move into a look at biblical authority from the view point of Brian Blount.
God's voice, then, is like an inaudible whisper - sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce - that jangles the nerves of the human spirit until, tensed and alert, it attends to what it is that God wants to "say." That saying will be different according to the variable conditions in which the human spirits who encounter it find themselves. When that spiritual whisper grips the human spirits where they live, it becomes an incarnate Word taking up the cause of the people who encounter it in the situations of that encounter. It is in this way that God's eternal voice for all becomes a living Word exclusively for them. God's whisper takes on flesh.
The word of God becomes flesh. It always does. It cannot stay a word without life. And yet, that is what we do to the word. We make it just that...a word about life or a word about life as we want it to be. But when the word of God becomes flesh, it becomes a part of our character and our character serves to bring the Word alive. This seems to open up a variety of ways for the Word to be heard and to become alive. It is not bad for the Word to take on flesh that has various faces to it. In fact, we are invited to make such a Word vulnerable among us. To embrace such vulnerability simply means that as we hear one another stories that have been brought to life by God's Word, we will learn a bit about how this Word takes on different forms of flesh. It is here that we must deal with one another and find ways to honor the different ways this whisper of God pulls us into new life. This is not always an easy project. And yet, it carries the potential of being a situation of great insight and hope.
Connection: Listen for that whisper...listen for that life that starts up and begins to transform the day even when we are not ready for transformation.
By your love and grace, O God, we are stretched because your Word is life. When we listen, we hear best when what we hear becomes who we are as the day unfolds. Keep our ears open to your whispering presence. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment