Beginnings
Bob Wickizer
John 1:1-18
My husband and I recently moved to a rural setting of Pennsylvania, to what we had hoped would be a more serene lifestyle. Like most new things in life, we experienced both eagerness and worry in the prospect of a new beginning and change. We tried to plan ahead to ensure that the move would be a smooth one but, despite our planning--or what business managers like to call "risk management," we failed to anticipate or appreciate the demands of the move. We berated ourselves for a time. But then it dawned on me after reading the prologue of John's Gospel that no one, this side of eternity, can ever anticipate or fully comprehend what he or she has never seen or been before. Like John the Baptist, we can bear witness to the light that has come into the world, a light that enables us to walk aright into new situations. But we cannot expect ourselves to know all things before their time. While we know this to be true on one level, on another level, many of us keep hoping for greater assurance. I wonder if this is not God's way of saying: "Hold on, I'm coming!" The yearning for more, more certitude, more quiet, more rural, more whatever, might it be St Augustine's restless heart that will not rest until it rests in thee? Could it be the psalmist's deep calling unto deep?
Countless men and women have spent hours, if not lifetimes, defending God's creating the world out of nothing. It seems to me, the hope for greater assurance, the hope to be able to know all things before their time, the hope that one can prove what he or she has not been privileged to witness firsthand is a very human response to the mystery we call life. To my mind, it is not a lack of faith to seek assurances or to want to know all things before their time. I see it as God's way of saying: "Hold on, I'm coming!"
Christ is the light that has come into the world. As John the Baptis ...
Bob Wickizer
John 1:1-18
My husband and I recently moved to a rural setting of Pennsylvania, to what we had hoped would be a more serene lifestyle. Like most new things in life, we experienced both eagerness and worry in the prospect of a new beginning and change. We tried to plan ahead to ensure that the move would be a smooth one but, despite our planning--or what business managers like to call "risk management," we failed to anticipate or appreciate the demands of the move. We berated ourselves for a time. But then it dawned on me after reading the prologue of John's Gospel that no one, this side of eternity, can ever anticipate or fully comprehend what he or she has never seen or been before. Like John the Baptist, we can bear witness to the light that has come into the world, a light that enables us to walk aright into new situations. But we cannot expect ourselves to know all things before their time. While we know this to be true on one level, on another level, many of us keep hoping for greater assurance. I wonder if this is not God's way of saying: "Hold on, I'm coming!" The yearning for more, more certitude, more quiet, more rural, more whatever, might it be St Augustine's restless heart that will not rest until it rests in thee? Could it be the psalmist's deep calling unto deep?
Countless men and women have spent hours, if not lifetimes, defending God's creating the world out of nothing. It seems to me, the hope for greater assurance, the hope to be able to know all things before their time, the hope that one can prove what he or she has not been privileged to witness firsthand is a very human response to the mystery we call life. To my mind, it is not a lack of faith to seek assurances or to want to know all things before their time. I see it as God's way of saying: "Hold on, I'm coming!"
Christ is the light that has come into the world. As John the Baptis ...
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