Reading for Reflection
Posted by taiwankat on October 31, 2009
Gabriel Marcel distinguished between approaching life as a problem and entering it as a mystery. If we deal with life as a problem, we reduce it to what we can do something about; we are concerned with figuring out and fixing. And, while there is an important place for figuring things out and fixing them, if that is all that we do we become myopic, mangers and mechanics of what is immediately before us, with no peripheral vision and no horizons. We miss most of life. But if we approach life as a mystery, we are forever coming upon meanings that exceed our definitions, energy and resources unguessed in our calculations. “Mystery is not the absence of meaning, but the presence of more meaning that we can comprehend.”
Eugene Peterson in The Unnecessary Pastor, page 69
I feel more and more convinced that only a spirituality which thus puts the whole emphasis on the Reality of God, perpetually turning to Him, losing itself in Him, refusing to allow even the most pressing work or practical problems, even sin and failure, to distract from God- only this is a safe foundation for spiritual work. This alone is able to keep alive the awed, adoring sense of the mysteries among which we move, and of the tiny bit which at the best we ourselves can apprehend of them- and yet, considering that immensity and our tininess, the marvel of what we do know and feel.
Evelyn Underhill, Concerning the Inner Life, Page 26
“Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness, it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. Immediately we abandon to God, and do the duty that lies nearest, He packs our life with surprises all the time.”
Oswald Chambers “My Utmost for His Highest”
