Not Knowing What to Ask
“Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord, . . . Isaiah 1:18 NASB
Reason – There is a place where we are afraid to go. There is a place where we no longer have any sense of direction, where we know we don’t belong, where our lives hang on a silver spider thread of hope. We only come near this place when we begin to realize that our longings for certainty keep us bound to a world of artificial calculations, of philosophical speculations designed to persuade us that somehow we are still in control. But this place is beyond that pretentiousness. This place is fraught with cosmic mystery that shatters our finite grasp of the universe. And we can only enter this place when we are willing to release our precious grip on our answers, when we are willing to ride the edge of daylight into a dark we cannot fathom. This is the place of God’s abode, a place never meant for men, where unshackled creation roils against cosmic madness.
We taste this place, we feel its presence, we smell its heated breath, when we come into contact with the holiness of YHVH. When we, the defiled, realize where we are, we are existentially undone. We are immediately reduced to nothingness. We long for this encounter while we fear its arrival, for in it our questions, the questions of a defiled existence, are swallowed up and dismissed. We long for this unity even while we know it extinguishes our particularity. At most, we cease to be. At least, we are singed, forever seared in ways we cannot fully explain.
All of our lives we attempt to enter and avoid this place. The tension of religious experience is found here, in the deepest desire to know God, to be fully known, and, at the same time, to be utterly afraid of being known and to know. And so we construct our reasonable answers to life’s questions; all the questions that never ask what it means to be in the presence of awe. For that we have no answer. For that we don’t know how to formulate the question. Our lives have no categories for the ultimate mystery of the Holy One. We may only sense the sighs of our souls, the panting after unity, the world beyond words. There is a place, a place where the imperative of awe witnesses to our infinite insignificance, a place that surpasses all we imagine powerful, a place where reason itself fails us because reason was never meant to describe what exceeds its boundaries.
When you and I come close to this place, when the hem of His garment sweeps by or the sound of His voice reverberates from some forgotten passageway, when we know He has been here because the air tastes different, in that moment of revelation, we are no longer able to say what it was or who it was or why it was. We discover the helplessness of our vocabulary. We know, but we cannot say how we know. In that place there is only act and response. “Endless wonder is endless tension . . . Endless wonder unlocks an innate sense of indebtedness. . . . all we own we owe.”
“All that is left to us is a choice—to answer or to refuse to answer.”[1]
Topical Index: wonder, awe, Isaiah 1:18
[1] Abraham Heschel, Man is not Alone, p. 69.
Beautiful.
Everything in me that pulls back from that knife edge is sin.
This is the essence of faith. The flesh knows naught of faith. Faith cannot be manufactured, seduced, coerced or counterfeited, which are all the actions the flesh must employ to ‘do good’. Faith IS obedience in the face of the unknown. Everything else is sin.
Faith is not a carefully scripted mountaintop experience, although it is as much at home there as it is anywhere; no, faith is much more likely to be found in ditches than on dizzying heights. Losing myself in a mountaintop experience is fun, but trusting instead of panicking in the face of sheer disaster, or reaching out a hand with the last crumb of hope to feed another when you have nothing left of it for yourself looks like pure impossibility, because it is – in the flesh. The knife edge of that impossibility, however, is where love dwells. This place is what the flesh fears most because this place is pitch black to the flesh; I can see nothing in the obedience to love that my own will recognizes as even possible, much less desirable, because it isn’t – to my flesh. Self never gets to here; Self can only write in the fiction of the flesh what it imagines love must be like, but it can only employ sin to ‘do’ it with. I have to force myself to ‘do good’; to love, to trust in my flesh, and not only will it be the wrong place, time, motivation or way, every time, I find that I end up not able to do it sober. I am convinced that all sin is insanity, and all insanity is shades of altered states of reality, which brings me back to the absurdity of trying to describe sin, but here goes yet another nonsense statement: I can only attempt righteousness in my flesh through the various altered states of reality – the insanity – that sin provides. Not only do I have to be out of my mind (crazy) to sin, I have to be out of my body, too! The only way I can do the crime is NOT to be actually ‘present’, for I was created to run on love; anything else I have to force or be forced to do. No one in their ‘right mind’, or even present and accounted for in their own bodies, would want anything else but love, so it turns out that the actions of the yetzer ha-ra, the flesh so-called, are all actually out-of-mind, out-of-body experiences! And I am out of breath.
There is a joy to trusting and obedience that can be found nowhere else. The little child that does anything you ask just because they want to please you is running on a joy that we try the hardest to avoid as soon as we gain any power in our flesh. I fear the places of faith, of trust, with every ounce of my flesh. I desire to LOOK LIKE I am loving and lovable, but the sheer faith true love will always require me to act in keeps me away from that edge. I hedge bet against love in my flesh every time. It will always be love-but, or love-and, or love-by-smoke-and-mirrors, for love that works by faith is unfathomable to me for a reason, and that reason is because true love only comes packaged in a Will and for a Purpose that is not mine. I have to return to being that little child again, in the vulnerable, dependent place where no one asks me what I think, or what I want, for both are irrelevant. Joy is a phenomenon only to be experienced in the place where only trust is left.
Oh the depth of riches, and wisdom and knowledge of Elohim! How unsearchable His ways! How pure is the joy when I set my face to seek Him. In Proverbs 2 we’re told to treasure His commands so that we make our ear attend to wisdom. We’re told to incline our hearts to understanding. If we cry for discernment and lift our voice for understanding if we seek her as silver and search for her as hidden treasures THEN we understand the fear of Yaweh! To fear Him appeals to my heart than fearing the ways of man and days beyond today.
I long to dwell in the secret place of the Most High.
How true your comment is, and how lovely this verse in Prov. His words are so real. Praise His Name for Ever.
thanks so much.
well, all I can add is ….. “WOW” …. I was simply lost in the depth and beauty of the melody.
And the Answer Is
Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down;
Fix in us thy humble dwelling;
All thy faithful mercies crown!
Jesus, Thou art all compassion,
Pure unbounded love Thou art;
Visit us with Thy salvation;
Enter every trembling heart.
Breathe, O breathe Thy loving Spirit,
Into every troubled breast!
Let us all in Thee inherit;
Let us find that second rest.
Take away our bent to sinning;
Alpha and Omega be;
End of faith, as its Beginning,
Set our hearts at liberty.
Come, Almighty to deliver,
Let us all Thy life receive;
Suddenly return and never,
—Nevermore Thy temples leave.
Thee we would be always blessing,
Serve Thee as Thy hosts above,
Pray and praise Thee without ceasing,
Glory in Thy perfect love.
Finish, then, Thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in Heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.
[Amen.]
HINENI: HERE I AM
“when we are willing to ride the edge of daylight into a dark we cannot fathom. This is the place of God’s abode, a place never meant for men”…”We taste this place, we feel its presence, we smell its heated breath, when we come into contact with the holiness of YHVH.”
“We may only sense the sighs of our souls, the panting after unity, the world beyond words. There is a place, a place where the imperative of awe witnesses to our infinite insignificance, a place that surpasses all we imagine powerful, a place where reason itself fails us because reason was never meant to describe what exceeds its boundaries.”
These verses above brought me memories that express what I have been shown in a dream/vision some years back.
I was going through a very difficult period where everything went so wrong, that ABBA in His chesed took me to a wonderful, amazing place of encouragement physically. HE showed me what shalom truly feels like in His Presence, by His side. His gentleness and love overflowed from Him, covering the entire place we were in.
Such serenity is beyond description! The air in that place was so pure, there was no shadow of light, for He was/is the Light. There was No darkness there.
Beautiful birds were everywhere around us, there was no fear, no evil in that place. I felt secured. I felt His Presence beside me speaking re-assuredly to me, asking me if I like the place! It was Heaven! I answered with a strong YES.
Perhaps that was the way He was inspiring me to press forward, that He was with me all the while.
HE never abandons us, He never will, when we seek His ways with our whole spirit and hearts.
That vision was like yesterday.
Michamocha! Toda ABBA!
That was beautiful, Ester!