Words get in the Way

We took a trip to Lake City, Colorado this summer.  The stark beauty of the place was indescribable.  Literally.  Every language set, with all the emphasis and attached emotions, fell short of accurately conveying what our eyes had seen, and our beings had absorbed.  I finally settled for the  “you had to have been there” concession.  It is impossible to communicate experience with words only.

Let me try.

The three-hundred-and-sixty degree panoramas, the enormity of the mountain peaks and sheer rock walls, the distance covered by ever-growing mountain streams moving from trickling snow to white-water rivers, are even physically larger than can be described.  Add to this scope, the aesthetic of this geography.  Things change inside you when you stand and take in this kind of view.  Try to impart that kind of change through verbal description.

Now, think of this.

Jesus stood in Heaven from the beginning of time. He could see all things in all directions.  Star-creating nebulae, fields of simmering stars, the minute details of each planet, and all of the vistas I just described.  He did not only view these things, He uttered something from His mouth, and these things came into existence.    These things and more (think; the Great Barrier Reef, The Aleutian Islands, Mt. Everest, Platypus…) all issued forth from His nature, through His mouth and into our sphere of existence.

I can’t help but think of how much fun this process must have been for Him!!!

What was likely not fun for Him was trying to describe these things to narrow minded people who had never left their own geography.  He had seen HEAVEN! He spoke to people who thought God wanted to control when we picked wheat!

I noticed this week, as we discussed world-changing ideas and realities, how limiting language was as a vehicle to transmit such things.  We all wrestled to transcend the medium of word-use, and impart to a room full of men and women that this same cosmos-breathing Being is intimately engaged in the lives of the men and women He had created.

God came to class with us this week, and thank goodness.  Without Him, we would have only experienced syllables.  With Him, things inside us changed as we listened, watched and absorbed His movement in the room.

Never settle for syllables when the Living God is available.