There Always (midweek)

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

September 4, 2019 

There Always

“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Where can I go then from your Spirit?

            Where can I flee from your presence?

If I climb up to heaven, you are there;

            If I make the grave my bed, you are there also.

If I take the wings of the morning

            And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

Even there your hand will lead me 
           And your right hand hold me fast.”  (Psalm 139:5-9)

           

There is a story in the Chinese Classic, the Journey to the West, of the mischievous Monkey King trying to flee away from the Buddha.  He puts on magic boots that carry him thousands of miles in a stride, and jumps and runs for weeks and years. Finally, he comes to what he thinks is the end of the universe:  in the blank space, there are five great white marble pillars, all stretching beyond sight up and down, with each of the two end ones only barely discernible in the distance at each horizon.  Monkey King believes he has finally come to where he can be free, unencumbered by higher authority and power.  But as he begins to cross to the other side of the boundary pillars, they begin to move silently in on him to capture him.  He realizes he has been in the palm of the Buddha during all his flight.  

We often talk about God as if God is outside the universe of nature, somewhere “up there,” or “out there.” From there, God supposedly occasionally, very rarely, intervenes and acts in our lives and world.  Such an intervention is often seen as a “miracle” or overruling of nature’s laws. 

But a more orthodox way of seeing this is that God is behind and beneath our lives and the world about us.  “In him we live, and move, and have our being,” says Saint Paul (Acts 17:28).   It is not that all things in our world are God, but that God is the ground upon which or in which it all rests.  It is not so much that God intervenes in human lives from outside, but rather that God's good intention and will is always at work, and that we need to do things to lessen resistance to it and enhance cooperation with it.   

This view helps us to feel the presence of God in all situations.  It corrects any tendency we might have to magical thinking, of that cheap view of God as some kind of wacky great uncle that we need to convince to give us things we want.

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+