But my mouth would encourage you; comfort from my lips would bring you relief.
Job 16:5 (NIV)
| De-centering by Cathy Vinson |
When the crowd glorified Jesus following the miraculous healings of every kind (Mt 15:31) they were "ascribing honor to Him, acknowledging Him as to His acts and His glory because Jesus' innate glory was brought to light." This all brings to mind the coordination test many did in school which involved taking both arms, sweeping them around (usually with eyes closed), with the hopeful landing as each index fingertip touched. I see this as a picture of what I like to do with God and His current presence and work. I want to enclose it in my grasp, what I can understand. I want apprehension, comprehension, summation. It boils down to a thing of control with me at the center. M Robert Mulholland writes an article about DECENTERING as God's movements continually bring His center to another place while we assume our structures have Him right at the middle. It is ourselves at the middle; He has moved! "the God who had become the maintainer and sustainer of our status quo...is suddenly eclipsed by the troubling, disturbing, uncontrolled God who decenters our life by coming to us from the margins and beyond to call us to an often unimagined center...God will encounter us in ever more marginalized ways until we ...learn to live comfortably in the ever moving center of God's presence and action in our world." So it seems our fingertips find their stay must not touch but ever remain in suspension, not enclosing or confining the circle, putting Him in a box. As Jesus' Disciples realized the "over and above" of Jesus' acts in the collection of excess fragments from the miraculous feeding (Mt 15:37), so His ways go "exceedingly above all we ask or think" (Eph 3:20). Oh may we come into the universe's room of "comprehending...the depth" (vs 18), "dimensions and sphere of activities of God's counsels and Christ's love that occupies that sphere." And what will happen when we live in the midst of these exceeding dimensions, rather than attempting to surround them? There will be "glorifying the God of Israel" (Mt 15:31) in the Church at "the revelation and manifestation of all He has and does..." |
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"Unto Him be glory in the Church..." (Eph 3:21) |
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Send a note to Cathy Vinson , the writer of this devotion.
Other Whispers from the Wilderness Devotions are found HERE
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