I live my life by logic and logic alone sometimes and it gets me in trouble. Logic is not a bad thing but having a sense of logic and an absence of wonder is unhealthy.
Yesterday morning I ran 5 miles. As I turned on to Circle Way I looked at the line of deep purple just above the trees where the sun would come up in about a half an hour. The deep purple gave way to a lighter purple that faded into a dark pink that turned to white next to a deep blue that stretched to the opposite horizon. The deep blue was a canvas painted with a radiant crescent moon. Below the moon were no less that ten bats that flew in a herky jerky fashion that made me wonder how they could fly at all.
After a couple of days of totally logical life my morning run tuned me to the voice of God in the sky and the fact that I had ignored that voice long enough to be in danger of trying to live life on my own.
I need wonder. I need awe. I need the mystical. If you are a follower of Christ you do too.
You cannot be a Christian without being a mystic.
I was talking to a homeless man at a laundry mat recently, and he said that when we reduce Christian spirituality to math we defile the Holy. I thought it was very beautiful and comforting because I have never been good at math. Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me. The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on His majesty and otherness forever.
- Don Miller Blue Like Jazz
They all realized they were in a place of holy mystery, that God was at work among them. They were quietly worshipful—and then noisily grateful, calling out among themselves, "God is back, looking to the needs of his people!"
Luke 7:16
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