I continue to be amazed at God’s ruthless work in my life, yet I am thrilled at my growing confidence that He will not leave me alone and does in fact intend to finish the work He started in me, maybe even long ago in my ancestors? Growing older is fascinating, as one accumulates experience with this inexhaustible God, what a gift.
Who is this one who created the galaxies, some 14 billion light years across and then was crucified by “His own” on one of the smaller globes created by Him? Was the crucified one the Messiah of Israel, the Son of God, set apart before creation, then sent like a caretaker to the King’s vineyard? Was this crucified one, assigned the death of a fool on Earth, but truly was God Himself, “the Word become flesh”? Was He simply referenced as the son of God in the way all Kings were at that time, when in fact He was Yahweh, yet now by His choice would forever participate in a fleshly garment like His own creation? If He was God, did this resurrected one, now veiled in human flesh, possibly set off some “transmutation” of creation, where death is no more, and His Kingdom is now among us? If He is as the scriptures declare,” seated on the right hand of the Father”, how is He both there and here, both Son and God, both man and Spirit?
You can see that I ponder a lot!
This week, I was reading John Polkinghorne’s Belief in God in an Age of Science. In my reading, I was even more intrigued with this God-man, Jesus; hearing this Cambridge Physicist tell a very ambivalent story about light, his insights reflecting the complexities in the heavens, which also “declare the glory of God.”
As Polkinghorne, connected physics with theology, he offered (at least I construed) a comparison of the evolution of scientific knowledge with the revelation that comes with one’s spiritual journey, which at my ripe age I am now finding true. I quote in part (p.29):
“Moments of radical revision in which new phenomena lead to new insights…;”
“Periods of confusion in which old and new ideas stand side by side in unresolved tension with each other…;”
“Moments of new synthesis and understanding, in which a theory is revealed capable of satisfactorily explaining the new phenomena in a convincing and comprehensive way…;”
“A continuing wrestling with unresolved problems, essential for a total understanding of the new theory…;”
“Realisations (sic) that the new theory has deep implications of a kind unanticipated when I was first conceived…;”
Polkinghorne then goes on to illustrate through a discussion of our growing understanding of light, from something once thought by the ancient world to have been emitted from the human eye in order that one might see, to a more modern understanding of reflection from the Sun, followed by the idea of electromagnetic waves, then particles, then particles that traveled in waves (photons) and so own.
In fact, long debate occurred between each period of thought, from that ancient speculation to the postulations by Huygens, Newton, Einstein, Pauli; and the conversation continues to this very day.
Some things are beyond finding out!
Could God, with the words, “let there be light,” have laid out a conundrum for the brightest of men, as well as a pattern for their study, so that not only physical light from the Sun, but “The Light” from “the Son” offers a clue to this God we cannot see, with our minds we cannot grasp, yet in our hearts we long for?
Our only tangible item for faith, a man born of a virgin, who made statements like, “If you have seen me you have seen the Father”, would later, with hands spread across a tree, hung between two thieves, manifest the love of this once Invisible One, and by His suffering, extend grace to all freely, and forever cancel death, Hell and the grave!!
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