Breath-Taking

Consider breathing.  Thankfully, breathing takes place in the background of our day-to-day. And, though we value it, we generally don't have to think much about our breathing.


If you think about it, breathing is a spiritual exercise. The word spirit might literally be translated as breath.   Holy Spirit literally means Holy Breath.

If “Spirit” is “Breath,” then spirituality is breath-ing.  Leonard Sweet, in his book, Soul Salsa, puts it this way. “A spiritual life is one that breathes out the ‘breath of life.’ The body is God-breathed.  It cannot help but breathe with regularity.  The soul must will itself to breathe and live.  It gasps for air until it finds its breath.  Hence the Sabbath.  The root of Sabbath means ‘to catch one’s breath.’ The faster and fuller you exhale, the more you need to inhale.  The Bible is designed to transform your life.  One of the biggest transformations is the formation of multilingual souls:  souls that have learned the languages of exhaling and inhaling, of speech and silence, the interior rhythms of space and time.

“In other words, to breathe new being into the soul, we need to decentralize our Sabbath keeping.  Sabbath does not come just once a week.  Every day needs a holy hiatus. Every week needs to be well ventilated with sabbaticals.”  

Many regard Sabbath simply as a day to “catch our breath” from the past week.  We see it as a recovery time and only that.  The “day of rest” should rest-ore, after all, right?  We look forward to it like marathon runners look forward to the end of their race:  a time to collapse and catch our breath.  But is there more to Sabbath-keeping than simply restoring the breath spent during the race of the preceding week?  Or do we ask, “Restoring our breath…. for what?”  For what future purpose might God be re-storing our breath? 

We have reduced the notion of rest to mean only recovery and in recovery our attention is on the past:  recovering from long hours, hectic schedule, etc., etc. In this reduction we miss a major point:  that rest is an appointment with God, a divine nexus where recovery from yesterday and preparation for tomorrow collide.

We have assumed that when God rested on Creation’s seventh day, that  he was, in a sense, recovering from Divine Exhaustion.  What if “rest” does not, in fact, mean “recovery”?  What if God’s “day of rest,” of breathing, has value intrinsic to itself, apart from other days of the week?  Breathing for breathing’s own sake?  I think we can learn something from Isaiah’s prayer: “My soul yearns for you in the night; in the morning my spirit longs for you.” (Isaiah, 26:9a)  I love the way he puts it… “my spirit longs for you.”  He could have just as easily said, “my spirit yawns for you in the night;  in the morning my spirit yawns for you.”  “I am so air-hungry for you.  I desperately need a deep, deep breath of You.  Please give me some of Your Holy Air.”  “Holy Spirit, come and fill this place,” the songwriter put it.  “Holy Breath, come and fill this place,” we might also sing it.  Spiritual air hunger.  In the morning, at the beginning of his day, Isaiah’s spirit… his breath, longed for the Lord!  In the morning, before the day’s activities, Isaiah inhaled deeply.  Not in exhaustion, but in preparation for what God had in store for him that day.

We need air.  At the beginning and end of our day, at the beginning and end of our week, and at the beginning and end of our year, our career, our project, our ministry… we need to rest:  To inhale deeply and experience the deep, refresh-ing, ready-ing breath of God.  We need to breathe… for breathing’s own sake. We need to live lives “well ventilated with sabbaticals.”  Every breath one of recovery and of preparation.  Each breath a rest, appointed by God.  Each breath a praise to Him, acknowledging His sovereignty over our lives.


Our walk with God is breathtaking only to the extent that we are Breath-taking.

Two Weeks from Today

The golfer who hits a hole-in-one on hole #8 of the 1st Annual Starfysh Golf Scramble will win this loaded 2011 Ford Fiesta.  In fact, all four of the par three's will have great hole in one prizes (Caribbean cruise for two, airline tickets, Sony Playstation 3).  Just sayin...

Friday, August 12th
The Golf Club at Thornapple Pointe
Registration deadline:  August 9th

Register Now

Please help me fill the course with golfers by spreading word in your circles. The more golfers we have the more water filters we can place.

Thanks folks!
Steve

Thornapple Pointe Hole 8:  Beautiful 165-Yard Par 3
A hole-in-one here wins a new 2011 Ford Fiesta

Mobile Money

I didn't downsize this picture because I want you to look closely at it.  Seems boring enough... it's a picture of remote mountain regions on the island of La Gonave, Haiti.

Click on the picture to zoom in a bit and you'll see, way out in the distance on the top of that hill, a cell phone tower.

The one "infrastructure" that has changed alot in Haiti is that of communication. It is a strange reality that most people in Haiti, including the poorest peasants, carry a cell phone.  (Digicel, the main cell phone company in the country) and Voila have invested millions in developing the cell tower network that covers much of Haiti and in making cell phones widely available at low cost to millions of Haitians.

In addition to the voice communication they provide, the use of cell phones for "mobile money" or "cellular banking" (the transfer of funds from one cell phone to another) is picking up steam.  Check out this 3 minute video on how it works: Mobile Money

This technology will no doubt play a role in Starfysh's strategies in future years as we move forward with our development work.

Breath

“the Lord God formed a man’s body

from the dust of the ground

and breathed into it the breath of life,

And the man became a living person.”  Genesis 2:7

Do you see it?  No, I mean literally, do you see “it”?  Look there, that little word “it,” tucked quietly in the middle of line three.  Little and inconspicuous.  But don’t miss it.  God breathed into it (the man’s body) and “it” THEN became a living person.

It is possible to have a body without the breath.  But the body cannot live without the breath of God.  The body remains lifeless until God’s breath enters us.  Breath brings life.  No breath, no life.

Is it possible that, when Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10), He was referring to the fact that life before and without the Breath of God, is not really living at all?

God is a God of breathing our Source of in-spir-ation.  The root “spir” here is the same word the apostle John used when he said, ^”The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” (John 6:62). Very literally, then, His words are the breath we take in.  He breathed the world into being.  And He breathes life into us.  Until then we’re just corpses.  Organized dust. Form without function. Existing but not living.  Bodies without Breath.

Re-Summoned

Evaluation of breathing is one of the most common and important assessments that doctors and nurses perform.  With stethoscope on chest we get our patient to breathe deeply.  For adults we simply ask them to take a deep breath.  For infants we might blow gently in their face which causes them to inhale deeply.

Some patients, however, just won’t breathe deep for us.  No matter what you say or do, they simply will not take a breath!

You can politely ask them to breathe.  You can sternly command them.  You can show them how you breathe and why you enjoy breathing.  You can plead with them, bribe them, guilt-trip them, even threaten them.   You can startle, frighten, or tickle them.  You can blow in their face.  You can tell them how popular it is to breathe, that many of their friends breathe.  You could try reasoning with them, giving them, say, four good reasons they should at least give breathing a try.  You might present them with survey results showing that people who breathe lead much more successful lives than those who don’t.  You could walk them through the complex physiology of breathing or maybe show them the latest research revealing convincing evidence that breathing prolongs life.  You can show them results of a poll showing them that 99% of all respondents believe that regular breathing is good.  Still, they will not breathe.

  

They are the most obstinate of patients. Unwilling, even to listen.  I have never been successful nor I have never heard of any of my colleagues being successful nor are there reports in the medical literature any instances of doctors having success at convincing this sort of patient to take a deep breath.

Tactics fail.  No matter how well prepared for and presented.  No matter our sincerity, concern, and good intentions… patients in cardiac arrest simply will not take a deep breath.  They won’t listen, nor will they respond.  Ever.

One hope remains.  Resuscitation.  In this instance, breath must be placed into the patient.  Breath from elsewhere.  Breath from Elsewhere.

We are inclined, sometimes, to forget that people to do not find Breath merely because we want them to.  Strong and well-executed apologetics can fall short.  Christian celebrity testimonials may fall short.  Saturation marketing falls short.  Television advertising, slick evangelistic tools, polished seeker-targeted programs fall short.

Imbedded deeply, yet significantly, within the word “resuscitate” is the Latin word “citar,” which means “to summon” or “to call.”  It is God Who calls, not us.  When we are resus-citated, we are literally “re-summoned”….called again to enjoy life.  “Summon me and I will answer,” Job prayed.

A patient in true cardiopulmonary arrest will die without external intervention.  A dead man can do nothing to save himself.  ^“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”  Ephesians 2:8   Breathless we lay, dying.  Unable to help ourselves.  God then, in mercy, stoops down and freely offers us His Breath.  Resuscitative breath.  Reviving breath.  “Re-summoning”  breath.

The summons comes from God.  He alone resuscitates.  The only hope for we who are dead is that our lungs would expand with the Holy Breath of God.  Divine CPR.  Through no effort of our own, God in His mercy performs His resuscitative work on us.

“Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your unfailing love, O LORD, and grant us your salvation.”  Psalm 85:6-7 

A Good Thing

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”

                                                                          Psalm 150:6

Martha Stewart, goddess-of-household-perfection, made it one of her trademark bylines:  “It’s a good thing.”   Fluffy crepes served with fresh-squeezed orange juice?  “It’s a good thing.”  A bed of fragrant lavender lining the garden path?  “A good thing.”  Homemade decorations adorning the freshly harvested, fifteen foot Christmas tree in the great room?   All very good things.”  I wonder how many homemakers have committed hari-kari trying to keep up with Martha.

What are the “good things” in our lives? Blessings like family, health, a new job come to mind.  In the day-to-day, we might be thankful for running water, nice weather, a fun vacation, even a good night’s sleep.  But when is the last time you heard someone say they were thankful that their body temperature was well-regulated or that their digestion was going well?

Funny, isn’t it?... that the things most critical to minute-to-minute survival are those that we take most for granted.  Crucial, life-sustaining body functions like our beating heart, digesting food, and body temperature regulation are those we don’t need (thank God) to think much about (leaving time for the conscious decisions about things not nearly so important:  What shirt should I wear?  Should I mow the lawn today?  Should I get single or double pepperoni on my pizza?).

Take breathing, for example.  While we all would agree breathing is definitely a “good thing,” we tend not to think nor talk much about it.  It’s just one of those processes in the background of daily life.  All that we do every day is done against the background of breathing and we really just aren’t aware of it.

Breathing is one of the many body processes that are under the control of the autonomic nervous system.  (Whenever you see the word “autonomic,” think “automatic.”)  Lots… in fact, most of the processes in our bodies that are absolutely necessary for day-to-day survival are under autonomic, that is automatic control.  Think about it, we do not have to consciously tell our hearts to beat, our kidneys to excrete, our bowels to digest, or our marrow to make blood.  We do not have conscious control over ovulation, body temperature regulation, or sweating.  (By the way, you might, from time to time, thank God for your autonomic nervous system.  Because of it, you can fall to sleep at night without worrying that you might forget to breath, or to secrete enough insulin to deal with that bedtime snack.  Without your autonomic nervous system you’d be so busy with such issues that you would never be able to get around to cleaning the garage).  But because breathing is automatic, most of us take it for granted.

Until there is a problem with it.

In “To Kill a Mockingbird” Scout makes the statement, “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”  She makes an interesting point.  We don’t particularly “love breathing.”  When is the last time you heard someone say they loved to breathe?  Yet, while we may not “love breathing,” we do need it.  We may not “love breathing,” but our life depends on a regular habit of it.  We may not “love breathing,” but take it away from us and we’ll learn to love it real fast.  We tend to value most that which we fear losing.  For proof, look into the panicked eyes of someone suffering an asthma attack.  Notice the worried expression of a patient depending on a ventilator to breath for them.  Seems it is when we cannot get our breath that we cherish breathing most.

The psalmist had something to say about good things.  “They who seek the LORD shall not be in want of any good thing” (Psalm 34:10b), he once said.  “No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.” (Psalm 84:11b).  James, too, spoke of good things when he said that “every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above…” (James 1:17a).

Breathing. It’s a good thing.

Scramble Proceeds Targeted

The 1st Annual Starfysh Golf Scramble will tee off just three weeks from today at Thornapple Pointe Golf Club.  We already have enough golfers signed up to ensure that the event will be a success. But, of course, my hyperactivity disorder is not letting me relax until we fill the course with golfers.  We have room for a total of 144 golfers (36 foursomes).

We have decided that all proceeds of this year's event will be applied to Starfysh's efforts to bring clean water to the island of La Gonave, Haiti, where the vast majority of people have no access to clean water.  The proceeds earned from every registered foursome will help us place a biosand water purification unit in a family's home. These systems will provide clean water for ten people for ten years and will immediately improve the health of the families and their village.  We have identified the village and our goal is to finish the funding for clean water for the village.

A great golf event is planned.  All four par-threes have great hole-in-one prizes: a car, a Caribbean cruise for two, airline tickets for two, and an electronics grab bag (choice of 32" flat screen TV, 8 GB iPod, or a Playstation 3.  There wil be lots of other fun stuff, too:  longest putt, longest drive, straightest drive, and several closest to the pin contests.

Included in the $110 entry fee is the steak buffet dinner which will immediately follow golf. That's where we'll award prizes.

Speaking of prizes, if anyone out there in blog-land would like to donate prizes (any size, any value) we'll take them to help us make the event even more fun. Just contact me. Also, if you'd like to sponsor a hole or  a golf cart or a beverage cart or something, you can check out the right side of this page for information about that.  Remember, sponsoring our event is a win-win:  it would be good advertising for your business, plus it will provide clean water to our world's most desperately-poor.  Like I said... win-win.

If you don't golf but know somebody who does, please tell them about this event. You might even consider paying the entry fee for someone who might have trouble coughing up the cash. Sponsor a foursome!  I'm pretty sure you could make four poor college kids pretty geeked if you arranged them a spot in our event.

Like I said, we're a go and based on where we are right now, the event is already a success. The rest will be gravy in helping us reach our goal.

Ah

 Let me tell you about Stefan. True story. Stefan is a four-year-old little boy whose mom brought in to my office the other day because of a sore throat and sinus symptoms.  Stefan is one of those inquisitive kids who is always thinking.  “I… I…. I’m almost five!,” he stuttered, as soon as I stepped foot in the room.  “You are?!,” I replied, with my incredulous voice.  “Yup!”, his countenance then changing.  Puckering his lip, he pitifully continued, “I’ve got a sore froat.”  His eyes filled with tears.  “Aw, I’m sorry,” I said, my voice dropping too.  “Let’s take a look.”  After checking his ears and glands, I asked him to open his mouth.  “Open your mouth and say ‘Ah,’” I said, in as reassuring tone as I could.  (For some reason, when you come at a four-year-old with a flashlight and a tongue depressor, they tend to tense up).  Stefan did a good job though, and I was able to get a good look on the first try.  Then it came.  Out of nowhere he blind-sided me.  “Does ‘Ah’ really do anything?,” he asked.  The way he accented “do” told me he really had his doubts.

I glanced over to his mom with one of those looks of disbelief.  If he hadn’t been so serious in asking, I might have laughed out loud.  “Yes, it does!,” I replied, turning back to face my inquisitor.  “I can see your throat a lot better when you say ‘Ah.’  And you did a great job!”  I thought it amazing that an “almost-five” year-old might wonder how saying “Ah” could help the doctor see into his throat.

Does “Ah” really do anything?  It’s good question.

His question was more than a question.  It was a question-statement, really.  What Stefan was really saying was, “You don’t really expect me to believe that my saying ‘Ah’ will do anything more than just opening my mouth so you can look into my throat, do you?”  He wasn’t doubting the opening-his-mouth part, he was questioning the saying-“Ah” part.  Cute little Stefan.  Two foot nothin’ Stefan.  Insightful Stefan.  Four-going-on-twenty-four-year-old Stefan.

It occurred to me that Stefan was simply asking a question that other patients ask too, just not out loud.  “Come on Doc,” they wonder.  “What’s ‘Ah’ got to do with it?”  Fact is, only a small percentage of patients actually say the word “Ah” when a doctor asks them to.  Most just silently open their mouths, assuming that’s what the doctor is really trying to get me to do.

Now, I have to tell you that, in the examination room, “Ah” does make a difference.  It makes a difference because when you verbalize it, your tongue pushes itself to the floor of your mouth, getting out of the way for the doctor trying to see to the back.  Furthermore, the louder you say it, the more the tongue gets out of the way.  Try it in front of a mirror.  Open your mouth.  Then say it.  Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh.  You see?  Saying “Ah” gets the tongue out of the way, allowing deeper inspection.  In fact, if patients would just master saying “Ah,” doctors wouldn't need near as many tongue depressors.

We all need to work on our “Ah's.”  Put "Ah" up against any big word you can think of and it holds its own.  Two letters can carry a lot of punch.  "Ah" conveys a sense of wonder, of discovery, of bewilderment, amazement, and awe.  It also carries an air of contentment, of satisfaction, and of thanksgiving.  Jeremiah gives you a feeling for the word when he says, “Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm.  Nothing is too hard for you.”  Jeremiah 32:17.

  

The person who says “Ah Sovereign LORD” is the one who recognizes his own puniness and God’s largeness.  It is in saying “Ah” that we acknowledge that God is God and we are not.

This Particular Scandal

“One generation will commend your works to another;

they will tell of your mighty acts.

They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty,

and I will meditate on your wonderful works.

They will tell of the power of your awesome works,

and I will proclaim your great deeds.”

                                                  Psalms 145:4-6

Commending. Telling. Proclaiming. When thinking of God’s creation, we cannot keep secrets. We must share with each other what we have witnessed in the works of the Creator, some (perhaps most) of which have been unseen until now. Wonders unappreciated for simple lack of detection.

“In order to maintain and increase the renown of these discoveries, it appears to me necessary… to have the truth seen and recognized, by means of the effect itself, by as many people as possible.”        Galileo

I resonate with Galileo who, confronted with the truth that Earth was not the center of the universe, thought he would explode unless he shared it.

Discovery is not for hobbyists who would treat wonders and truths like collectibles, placing them in lock boxes for safe keeping.  Discovery is not an exclusive privilege reserved for especially-favored super-Christians.  Discovery is not only the stomping grounds of shepherds and poets, but of astronomers, too.  And grocers and greenskeepers and salesmen and second-basemen. “We’re all,” says Annie Dillard, “up to our necks in this particular scandal”(Pilgrim at Tinker Creek).

All of us. And up to my neck is right!  I have either been preparing for or practicing medicine for over thirty years. Infants that once screamed bloody murder on my infant scales are now hovering over their own babies being traumatized by the same ordeal.  Sage adults whose confident wisdom I once soaked in now lie confused in their beds, waiting for my next visit to the nursing home.  Children to whom I lectured about wearing bicycle helmets and to stop biting their nails are those for whom I now write medical school recommendations.

I have devoted most of my life to understanding the human body.  Patients who place trust in me for their families’ lives want to know that I understand the human body.  My patients do not care that I do not know how to ride a horse, fly an airplane, or hang drywall, and they could care less that I play double bogey golf. All they care about is this: do I understand their body and can I fix them.

I wasn't very deep into my medical school training before there began within me a nagging sense that something was up. The cadavers, the pathology slides, micro lab.  Might they have something more to say than what would show up on the tests?

Attempting the Tell

I suspect God is sad when we choose to live safe, sit-tight-and-stay-put lives. I mean, where's the need for faith when we never dare to venture out?   Like Dillard’s amoebae, we settle for pond water while a universe full of God-evidence goes unnoticed.  “We are called to live a noticed life,” says Bruce Main (Spotting the Sacred).  “Like Jesus,” he says, “we are called to begin the process of excavation by unearthing the buried and unrecognizable glimpses of holiness in our midst.”

This blog is, in a sense, my own exercise in noticing.  And it is as I wrestle with sentence structure, light bulbs turn on. Illumination comes during the struggle of articulation, not before (which is probably why I always wait until I've finished my blog entry before I decide what to title it). And though it is, for me, a  fun and rewarding struggle, it is very much a struggle.  Transcendence resists definition, it seems. Epiphany and syntax seem strange bedfellows.

The psalmist’s own frustration is apparent when he says,

“Many, O LORD my God,

are the wonders you have done.

The things you planned for us

no one can recount to you;

were I to speak and tell of them,

they would be too many to declare.”

                                           Psalm 40:5

“My mouth will tell of your righteousness,

of your salvation all day long,

though I know not its measure.”

                                             Psalm 71:15

I share the psalmist's pent-up emotion.  Speaking and telling do fall frustratingly short.  God’s wonders are many and I cannot know the true measure of what I see.  Tension mounts as I want so much to nail it, while at the same time I know I never will.

But this telling I must try, for I have discovered that just attempting the tell has been well worth the effort.  Through my journaling and reflecting and writing, I have realized that notice is just the beginning and that maybe the struggle of committing notice to language is what God desires… what makes Him smile.

Ancora Imparo

“The harder I work, the behinder I get.”

                                                  refrigerator magnet

There is an interesting phenomenon in medical learning that applies to all disciplines of study:  The more I learn, the more I find there is to learn and the more I realize how little I truly know.  Have you ever felt this way?  As if I had a chance at knowing everything there is to know in the field of medicine, it did not help at all when I learned that the world’s fund of scientific knowledge doubles every five years.  I did not have to go long into my professional career before I had to acknowledge that I would never arrive at a point of completing the learning process.  The magnet was right.

Annie Dillard spoke of being overwhelmed:  

“I reel in confusion: I don’t understand what I see.  With the naked eye I can see two million light-years to the Andromeda galaxy.  Often I slop some creek water in a jar and when I get home I dump it in a white china bowl.  After the silt settles I return and see tracings of minute snails on the bottom, a planarian or two winding round the rim of water, roundworms shimmying frantically, and finally, when my eyes have adjusted to these dimensions, amoebae.  At first the amoebae look like muscae volitantes, those curled moving spots you seem to see in your eyes when you stare at a distant wall.  Then I see the amoebae as drops of water congealed, bluish, translucent, like chips of sky in the bowl.  At length I choose one individual and give myself over to its idea of an evening.  I see it dribble a grainy foot before it on its wet, unfathomable way.  Do its unedited sense impressions include the fierce focus of my eyes?  Shall I take it outside and show it Andromeda, and blow its little endoplasm?  I stir the water with a finger, in case it’s running out of oxygen.  Maybe I should get a tropical aquarium with motorized bubblers and lights, and keep this one for a pet.  Yes, it would tell its fissioned descendants, the universe is two feet by five, and if you listen closely you can hear the buzzing music of the spheres.” (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)

Do we, in our Christian journey, allow ourselves to become mental amoebae, preserving our endoplasm at the expense of missing galaxies of Truth?  Paul’s endoplasm must have been bubbling when he exclaimed,^“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” Romans 11:33.

At the same time, it is the very abundance and availability of information that can, paradoxically, numb our senses, causing us to plop down in a heap of mental exhaustion.  Acknowledging the impossibility of knowing everything, we are inclined to give up the pursuit of knowing anything, leading submissive lives, passively waiting for the scraps tossed our way, settling for whatever tweets, email-forwards, and Facebook messages are sent our way, or whatever TV programming happens to offer up this week.

The all-too-common response, then, is to throw up our hands in surrender.  Disillusioned, we stop actively learning, and we demote discipleship from a required course to an elective one in the curriculum of faith.  “If God’s paths are untraceable,” we say, “why risk getting lost?”  We stay home, rationalizing our complacency by concluding that learning earns us no brownie points.  Entrance to Heaven does not depend on our Jeopardy performance. (I’ll take “Pearly Gates” for $1000, Alex).  And if it does not make a difference, why stress over knowing something we can never fully comprehend anyway?  If we don’t work harder, we won’t get behinder, we conclude our logic.

We settle, becoming spiritual lazybones, shifting our spiritual weight from one buttock to the other, trading in discovery for familiarity, “Aha!” for “Ho-hum.”

Where does all this leave us then?  On one hand we have a God who, despite all our striving, can never be comprehended.  Faith is, for us, too wonderful and mysterious to be fully understood.  Attempting to do so, on the other hand, seems only to magnify the difference between God and us....

Ah… now I see!  Learning more of God and His ways is not a threat to His omni’s.  In discovering truths about God, we do not, like Dawkins suggests, scientifically chip away at the mystery of God’s essence, reducing it to some complex formula.  To the contrary!  Discovery leads us, not away from worship, but to it!  It did Galileo.  Upon discovering the moons of Jupiter, he penned the following words in his journal:  “I render infinite thanks to God for being so kind as to make me alone the first observer of marvels kept hidden in obscurity for all previous centuries.”

Discovery humbles us and elevates our estimation of the Creator.  The more we learn, the greater we realize God to be, and the more properly we can see ourselves in contrast to Him.  “Learning is therefore,” as Calvin College president Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. has said, “a spiritual calling.  Properly done, it attaches us to God” (Engaging God's World -- A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living).   Frances Collins, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, which recently completed the colossal task of identifying all of the 3,000,000,000 letters of the human DNA code, said it well.  “For me,” he said, “scientific discovery is also an occasion of worship.”  (“Time,” August 15, 2005)

The words "discovery" and "disciple" have the same Latin backbone, "discere," which simply means “to learn.”  Learning, for the follower of Christ, is neither elective nor optional.  Disciples are, by definition, learners… people with lifestyles of proactive, intentional discovery.  Always alert and searching, ears perked, eyes wide open.   Fact is, we are students and, as followers of Christ, we will always be students.  Students of faith, learners of truth.

“Ancora imparo,” remarked Michelangelo, at the time, 87.  “I am still learning.” A fitting modus operandi for every serious follower of Christ.  Active, intentional learning is the essential lifestyle of all who would follow Him.

The Problem of Mystery

“Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?

They are higher than the heavens—what can you do?

They are deeper than the depths of the grave—what can you know?

Their measure is longer than the earth and wider than the sea."    Job 11:7-9

Atheist Richard Dawkins contends that “the ultimate goal of science is to remove all mystery.” Mystery annoys Dawkins, legitimizing, for him, the role of science.  For Dawkins, everything that can be known, must be.

I sometimes wonder if we, as Christians, slowly and unwittingly begin to buy in to this diefication of science.  Dawkinology. And whether or not we have, without really thinking about it, begun to gradually demote our faith journey to a mere discipline of study, thinking that if we study long and hard enough we might eventually nail it...God now just another notch in our intellectual belt, one more mystery solved.  

What is our problem with mystery?  Have we bought in to science’s presumption that mystery must go? And anyway, is it even possible that the study of created things could ever chip away at God's infinity?  

We have become uneasy with mystery.  Mystery has become, for us, sinister and untrustworthy.  We have made it so. And it is this sinisterization of mystery that has led many to agree with Dawkins’ assertion that mystery is the enemy.  For the person of faith, however, mystery is not the enemy. 

“If all you can trust and have faith in is the God you can comprehend and understand, then who are you worshiping?” Leonard Sweet, Soul Salsa.

Where does this leave mystery, then, for those who believe in God?  Should we regard mystery as a tolerated necessity of faith, just accepting it as the way it is?  Or should we, in fact, celebrate the mystery of faith, knowing that we can never fathom God?

And if we promote mystery from neutral status (a facet of faith we simply regard as un-objectionable) to a position of esteem (a celebrated tenet of faith), we must ask ourselves, what is the role of discovery in the journey of faith?  Are the very endeavors of discovery and learning counter to what we have just said is axiomatic to our faith?  If so, dare we strive to know more?

On the other hand, what is intrinsically wrong with wanting to solve mystery?  Is our opinion of God affected by how much we know about Him?  “We live by faith, not by sight,” we are told (2Cor. 5:7).  But might not "sight" and experiences and discovery be able to boost and strengthen our faith?

So where does this leave us, knowing that our tiny, finite minds can never grasp all that is true about God?  What can be known about Him and does He want us to know it?  Might God melt under the heat lamp of human scrutiny, lessened just a bit with every piece of evidence revealed?  Is God sweating it out, worried that we will someday have Him pegged?  If not…. if God is beyond measure, dare we try to measure Him?  

Or is it just possible God wants us to know more about Him than we now know?

Such Knowledge

I later felt a little convicted over reducing God’s Word to a smart-alec comment, more wise-crack than witness, smugly quoting for my own satisfaction a memorized verse apart from the context in which it was written.  I had used my memory verse as a lament, an expression of grief over my incapacity to know it all.  I had exploited it as a mere venting of frustration, no less than my paraphrase of “Arrgh!”

“O LORD, you have searched me

and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise;

you perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down;

you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue

you know it completely, O LORD.

You hem me in—behind and before;

you have laid your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,

too lofty for me to attain.”      Psalm 139:1-6

Frustration was not, however, the primary emotion prompting the psalmist’s thoughts.  His inability to comprehend God led not to exasperation but celebration.  Coming to terms with the limitations of his own humanity and the immensity of God’s deity, David was able to say, in effect, “You’re God, I’m not.  And I’m good with that.”

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the LORD.

As the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways 

and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9

The paradox is this:  knowing God does not require comprehending Him.

Flannery O’Connor expressed it well:  “Whatever you do anyway, remember that these things are mysteries and that if they were such that we could understand them, they wouldn’t be worth understanding.  A God you can understand would be less than yourself.”

Understanding God is not the point.  Being OK with our incapacity to understand God is the point.  And not only being OK with it, but celebrating it, for acknowledging our puniness in light of God’s largeness gives us permission to be puny.  We can relax, knowing we cannot know.

Why bother, then, with exploration and study?  What part does discovery and learning have in the life of a Christian?  If we truly celebrate the mystery of God’s omni’s, do we dare risk attempting to define the One Who is indefinable?