From the Archives

Confession: I've got about half a dozen different blog-post drafts in the works right now...sitting, forlorn and (for the time being) ignored, in my computer files. Ah, good intentions and half-shaped projects. BUT I really do want to post something, for the sake of keeping the dust from gathering on this blog.

So we go to the archives, yes? I was looking through my files the other night, actually, and came across this--an article I wrote back in my senior year at Moody Bible Institute, for the 2005 Jerry Jenkins Writers Contest. (You know Jenkins--the guys who wrote the Left Behind series.) Anyway, it was a flashback to (1) something I wrote in the college days (and it's kind of amusing to see how my writing has changed even since then) and (2) an experience from that same time period--what I wrote about. Plus, this is a topic that I do feel very strongly about (though the article is narrative and thus doesn't get into the waters of Scriptural mandates re. the issue): believers' very clear responsibility to care for our aging family members...and our regrettable neglect of this responsibility and privilege.

So, anyway, I thought I'd post it here, just for fun.

Discarded Diamonds

A dull buzz, and the heavy glass door clicked and then whooshed open, spilling warm air over the entryway. As we stepped inside, we were assaulted with the smell of stale body odor, urine, and acidic cleaning chemicals, all laced with a strange meaty smell wafting from the kitchen…sloppy joes, maybe? I sucked in a breath, pushing back the sick feeling in my stomach and desperately wishing to escape back into the crisp autumn air. Two nurses’ aides shoving a stubborn metal cart of folded bed sheets rattled past, their sneakers squeaking against the linoleum. Trying to stay out of the way, we pressed our backs against the faded wall.

It was our first time visiting the nursing home. Every semester at our school, students were required to sign up for a weekly Christian ministry or community service, and this semester the four of us—Jonathan, David, Mai Lee, and I—had opted to visit a nursing home each Tuesday. I had chosen this particular ministry in hopes that the residents would be pleasant and content, not needing much from me. At least, that’s how I imagined my own grandparents, who were in a nursing home down in Texas. I figured we would just show up, play a game of checkers or look at pictures of grandkids, and then leave—nothing too difficult.

We moved down the wide, dingy hallway to the litter of tables and chairs that constituted the lounge area, where the director of nurses had said we could initially introduce ourselves to some of the residents. “What in the world?” I muttered under my breath, eyeing the scene before me.

The dozen or so people scattered around the large room weren’t exactly the clean, happy grandparent-types I had expected to see. Some sat listlessly around long wooden tables; others slumped in wheelchairs or portable hospital beds. Many were dirty, caked in sticky remnants of whatever had been served for lunch. Some were incoherent, muttering gibberish and staring blankly into space. One woman hurled irritable profanities at the passing nurses’ aides. Most were obviously disabled either mentally, physically, or both. One word floated across my mind: decay. I could see it, smell it, and feel it in the heavy, sour air.

A wood-paneled television mounted high on the wall blared out a rerun of “Jeopardy,” and a white-haired man impatiently swatted the air as we walked by, as if shooing a pesky fly. “Move! I can’t see,” he growled. We moved. Jon, David, and Mai Lee fanned out, each targeting a different person, wielding smiles and friendly greetings. I stood uncertainly scanning the large room. I had always had a picture of nursing home life in my mind, but apparently it was just make-believe. The reality was completely foreign to me. These people didn’t choose to be here, I thought ruefully. No, they were the outcasts, the parents and grandparents who, because they couldn’t care for themselves, had been tucked neatly away, out of sight and out of mind. Among an up-and-coming generation prizing youth and usefulness, these people no longer had any place.

Suddenly a shrunken man in a wheelchair caught my eye and broke into a toothless grin, his head bobbing up and down like a puppet’s. He began babbling happy, unintelligible phrases, smiling and drooling as he reached out a damp hand—towards me. Not knowing what else to do, I offered my own hand, along with a tentative smile and “hello.”

“His name’s Tony,” said a nearby aide who was systematically dropping pills into Dixie cups. She threw a motherly glance at my new acquaintance. “Hey, Tony, baby. Are you flirting with this young lady?” She winked at me and then went back to her rows of paper cups.

“Oh…” I turned back to Tony, who was still gripping my hand expectantly. “Hi, Tony.” He beamed—“Unghh!”—and I felt my shoulders relax slightly.

Then a booming voice rang out behind me, “Hullo! Hey, miss.” I turned and accepted another proffered hand, the property of a tall, wiry-haired man wearing a soiled Chicago Cubs t-shirt. “Who are you? I ain’t never seen you here before,” he said, his dark, wrinkled eyes searching my blue ones with child-like curiosity.

“Amber,” I replied. “My name’s Amber. And I’ve never been here before. What’s your name?”
“Michael,” he said, tugging his t-shirt down over his protruding belly and grinning bashfully.
“Hi, Michael, it’s really nice to meet you.”

Surprisingly, time began to fly by. Most residents were overjoyed to talk with me, and those who couldn’t talk seemed grateful just to be acknowledged. Several questioned why the four of us were there. At my answer—“Oh, we really just came to visit”—their eyes widened in surprise and pleasure. My uncertainty melted with their friendliness and candor…and their obvious hunger for companionship. I could read it in their eyes and their voices, as clearly as if they had audibly pleaded, “Please care about me!”

I quickly discovered that each of these “discarded” people had a unique personality and a special story to offer. Rusty, for example, an enthusiastic bottle redhead, informed me that she was a singer in her younger days. “I was on TV!” she said proudly, flipping her long hair over one shoulder. “Did you ever see me?” She still loved to sing, insisting that my three friends and I accompany her high-pitched warble in a song.

Frank was a small, eager man in wrinkled khakis and a dingy wife-beater. With sparkling eyes and fluid hand motions, he rattled on in a lisping voice. The words spilled out so rapidly that none of us could get a word in edgewise. “My roommate, he’s happy you’re here, too,” he said, nodding to his silent, stern-featured roommate. “He doesn’t know English good, but he likes company, like I do.” Mai Lee and I sat together, smiling and nodding as we listened.

Frank and Rusty were two of the “happy” ones.

Others—many others—couldn’t find nearly so much joy in lives spent merely “marking time.” Rough, dirty, and occasionally foul-mouthed Leroy revealed a surprising background: he was once a monk in training for the priesthood. Now his sunken eyes were hard and bitter, angry at a world that would leave him trapped in a wheelchair, a result of his bad back and increasing age. He had two daughters whom he had not seen or heard from in many months, he told us.

Norma was a plump Jewish woman with a vivid auburn wig and a penchant for blue eyeshadow. Her eyes filled with tears, and she spoke in broken whispers. I had to lean forward in my chair to hear her. Like Leroy, Norma was confined to a wheelchair, living in loneliness and constant pain from her multiple physical ailments. “Pray for me,” she pleaded in a raspy voice, clutching my hand. “I just want to die.”

Every person I met was different, but all had one thing in common: busy, modern-generation children and grandchildren who had given them over to the care of the nursing home. The few residents who occasionally received visits from family members were the lucky ones; most were left to finish out their lives alone.

As I sat in the middle of the stuffy, smelly room, I felt as if a light had flicked on in my mind, illuminating something that had always existed but that I’d never seen before. And what I saw made me ashamed. The truth was that these broken, dirty people were alone and desperate, silently crying out for someone to care about them, someone to love them. In our busyness and misplaced priorities, we had managed to willingly discard some of our most beautiful treasures—our parents and grandparents.

I was quiet on the ride back to school, trying to sort out my thoughts. I looked down at my hands, resting loosely in my lap. They were sticky and needed washing, and the stale odor of the nursing home still clung to my clothing. But it didn’t really matter anymore; in fact, the smell and the dirtiness somehow felt appropriate, lingering reminders of what I had seen. Maybe I’ll call Mamaw and Papaw when I get back to school, I mused. I watched the scenery streak by outside my window and thought how different this ride was from the one that carried me to the nursing home just over an hour and a half ago. Or maybe it was I who was different.

Who Would Have Known?

I wonder sometimes how the angels must have marveled at God, when Satan and his allies rebelled and were cast out of heaven. They’d known that God was glorious; they’d witnessed His splendor and majesty and greatness ever since their creation. But this was something new, wasn’t it? They’d never before seen sin and rebellion…which means they’d never before seen God’s anger…never seen His holiness and His might expressed in this way. They must have been awed at this new display of His glory.

I’d never really thought about this until I started reading John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The poem opens with the fallen angels talking amongst themselves after they’ve been cast out of heaven. Here are some snippets of what they say about God—and their surprise at His might (which they now have experienced):

…so much the stronger proved[God] with His thunder.
And till then who knew
The force of those dire arms? (p. 14)

But He who reigns
Monarch in heaven, till then as one secure
Sat on His throne, upheld by old repute,
Consent or custom, and His regal state
Put forth at full, but still His strength concealed,
Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall.
Henceforth His might we know, and know our own… (p. 33)

I’m not recommending Paradise Lost as a systematic theology or anything; Milton takes a lot of literary/poetic license, and some of his theology (and Scriptural interpretation) is off. But this definitely is food for thought!

Think about it: God, through the angels’ rebellion, revealed an aspect of Himself that otherwise would have been unknown (or at least known only theoretically). This was His plan from the beginning.

The same thing is true of man’s rebellion and fall. The holy angels were observers of this, too, and they must have been astounded yet again. They’d sang for joy at the world’s creation; they’d seen the beauty of God’s perfect created order, the purity and dignity of the earth and heavens—and man, the pinnacle of creation and the bearer of the image of the Creator. But with the fall, and the entrance of sin into the world, God’s image in man was debased and disfigured. His perfect creation was cursed, tainted. Maybe the angels wondered how good possibly could result from this.

It’s hard for us to grasp, too. After I started writing this blog post, ironically enough, I turned on the Christian radio station to hear Randy Alcorn being interviewed and answering questions from callers. One woman called in to ask Randy how he possibly could say that God ordained sin. Why would God do that?

I liked Randy’s answer, which was, in summary: I don’t know…but God’s wisdom is far, far greater than ours, and His own glory is His highest priority. And through ordaining sin, God has ordained to bring Himself the greatest glory. In a God-centered universe, this is exactly as it should be.

Human wisdom is limited. Angels’ wisdom is great, but likewise limited. But God’s wisdom is manifold—infinite. And His own glory is His highest priority. He ordains everything—evil included—so as to reveal the most about His glory.

Just as with Satan’s rebellion, God ordained/allowed man’s rebellion very deliberately. He ordained it in order to bring Himself exponentially greater glory by showcasing aspects of Himself that otherwise never would have been know. And what we see of God’s glory through means of mankind’s fall is absolutely astounding. Without sin, there would be no need for redemption…and without redemption, we would never know God’s compassion, lovingkindness, mercy, and grace. He wouldn’t be any less compassionate, gracious, merciful, etc. (since He is those things by very nature of being who He is)—but we (both humans and angels) would have no way of really knowing it…or praising Him for it.

Yes, this is manifold wisdom.

Who would have thought that God would ordain and orchestrate the universe so that the very thing that most dishonors Him and destroys His creatures would, in the end, bring Him even greater honor…and mankind even greater good? The angels never could have foreseen it, and Scripture says that they marvel, and long to look into these things—no wonder! How much should we, too, marvel—we, who don’t just observe but actually get to experience redemption?

John Owen says some great things along these lines in his book Communion with the Triune God (p. 208; italics mine):

There is a glorious end whereunto sin is appointed and ordained, and discovered in Christ, that others are unacquainted with. Sin in its own nature tends merely to the dishonor of God, the debasement of his majesty, and the ruin of the creature in whom it is; hell itself is but the filling of wretched creatures with the fruit of their own devices. The comminations and threats of God in the law do manifest one other end of it, even the demonstration of the vindictive justice of God, in measuring gout unto it a meet recompense of reward (2 Thess. 1:6). But here the law stays (and with it all other light) and discovers no other use or end of it at all. In the Lord Jesus there is the manifestation of another and more glorious end; to wit, the praise of God’s glorious grace (Eph. 1:6) in the pardon and forgiveness of it—God having taken order in Christ that that thing which tended merely to his dishonor should be managed to his infinite glory, and that which of all things he desires to exalt (Heb. 8:6-13)—even that he may be known and believed to be a “God pardoning iniquity, transgression and sin” [Mic. 7:18].

Owen’s a little hard to follow sometimes, but what he’s getting at is this: Since the beginning, creation has told of the glory of God—His glory in His wisdom, His power, His goodness—but it can only tell so much. The law, when it was given, revealed a bit more; through it, God’s glory in His righteousness, His holiness, and His hatred of sin were shown. But, still, even this couldn’t reveal everything God intended to reveal about Himself. It was only in the coming of Christ to accomplish redemption that we—and the angels in heaven—can see God’s glory in His grace­—and that is the very thing in which He most desires to be glorified.

One of my absolute favorite Bible passages is in Exodus 34, where Moses has asked God to show him His glory. God hides Moses in the cleft of the rock and passes by, and the statement He makes, the way in which He chooses to definitively proclaim His glory to Moses is by saying that He is “the Lord, the Lord God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth.”

What a God we have!

I think our response has to be like that of the angels—to just marvel at this wisdom that so supersedes our own. At the end of Paradise Lost, the angel Michael reveals to Adam God’s plan for future redemption through Christ. Adam responds in awe, saying (Paradise, p. 377):

O Goodness infinite, Goodness immense!
That all this good of evil shall produce,
And evil turn to good; more wonderfulT
han that which by creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness!
... rejoice much more, that much more good thereof shall spring;
To God more glory, more good-will to men
From God, and over wrath grace shall abound.

Indeed.

Out of the Dream

“In your light we see light.”–Psalm 36:9

I walked out of the theater impressed after seeing the movie Inception recently. It was highly entertaining, with good effects, and cleverly written, I thought. (Really, who thinks this stuff up?) But what I liked most is that it left me thinking. I love it when movies do that.

Remember the final scene? Everyone has resurfaced from the crazy dream-within-a-dream world. It’s sort of a sigh-of-relief moment—a comfort to have regained reality. But then the final shot is Cobb’s little weighted top spinning, wobbling like it’s about to fall (which it will do in reality but not within dreams)…and then the screen goes black before you see whether it does fall.

Well done, Movie! Way to keep us guessing. The characters have been grappling with this question of “How do you know your ‘reality’ actually is reality?” And then at the very end, just when you feel you’ve regained your footing, that final scene leaves you with a grain of doubt. Is reality real? How do you know?

I came away from the movie, like I said, thinking—and with one main lingering thought: What does a person do without a sure reference point for determining reality?

It’s disturbing, isn’t it? The answer seems to be “fall apart.” Come unhinged. That’s what the movie portrayed, at least; the idea of losing a reference point really messed with the characters’ minds. And Cobb’s wife was the extreme example. Losing the ability to know the real from the dream made her come unraveled; in the end, she took her own life.

Mere movie drama? I don’t think so. Even off the big screen, it’s a haunting question: What does a person do without a sure reference point for reality?

Because God Himself is the Ultimate Reality—everything else having existence and meaning only in relation to Him—He is the only reference point. “In Him we live and move and have our being.” We’re His creatures, and without Him, we have no way to truly understand or delineate reality. To try to do so is…well, absurd. But sin makes us prefer the absurd over submission to God, doesn’t it? We’re born rejecting and rebelling against Him, and so we try to understand reality (or define our own) apart from Him.

But do we realize what we’re doing? Do we realize that in rejecting God, we’re rejecting the only sure reference we have for reality?

Some do. Some people recognize the absurdity and meaninglessness of reality without God…and actually embrace it. Do you call that crazy? Philosophers call it nihilism. I call it at least consistent. Because if you cast off God, the only really viable alternative is meaninglessness and absurdity. No Creator means no purpose, no order, no point to it all. Existence is haphazard and irrational; there is no way to gauge “truth” or, in the end, to even know whether what we observe and experience by our senses is legitimate or illusion. To nihilistic thinking, it could be, as Poe wrote (and Inception presented), that “all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”

Can’t imagine any “normal” person-next-door embracing that kind of philosophy? Well, let me tell you a story. It’s something that happened during my sophomore year of college:

It was the spring of 2003, a gray afternoon in downtown Chicago. Janet, a sleek-suited businesswoman whom I’d met moments before, sat with me on the rough carpet of Borders, sandwiched between shelves of glossy children’s paperbacks. I remember the fluorescent lighting casting an unnatural tinge on her brown hair; I also remember feeling that the entire scene was slightly unnatural—me, the jeans-clad Bible college student and Janet, the middle-aged urban executive, complete strangers, discussing philosophy in between copies of The Velveteen Rabbit and Where the Sidewalk Ends.

My interview with Janet was part of a “worldview project” for Christian Life & Ethics class. The assignment was to find someone I’d never met and interview that person about his or her worldview. The interview questions were significant: “What do you think is ultimate reality, the ‘really real’?” “What is a human being?” “What happens at death?” “How is it possible to know things, to have consciousness?”

We’d been studying these questions in class, along with various worldviews: pantheism, panentheism, finite godism, deism, etc. Honestly, I saw most of these as just esoteric labels for theories that only philosophy professors (and, of course, their students) would ever deliberately muck around in. (Really, who even knew what the heck panentheism was?) But Janet was the third person I had interviewed in the bookstore that afternoon, and like the two interviewees before her, she was giving me shocking answers.

When I asked, “What is reality? How is it possible to know?” she sighed and said, “I don’t know… I really don’t believe that we can know.” I was incredulous. “Not anything?” She shook her head, “No, nothing at all. Who’s to say it isn’t all just an illusion?”

I was astounded. Janet was no philosopher, and she used no polished, academic language. She was overwhelmingly normal—and an atheist and nihilist (though I don’t know whether she would have know/used that terminology).

It saddens me to remember this. But Janet is just one of so very many, and it reminds me that the question spawned by Inception—what do you do without a sure reference point for determining reality?—is overwhelmingly practical. People without Christ are without that reference point. They are lost in the truest sense of the word.

You can acknowledge/embrace meaninglessness, like Janet, or (like most people), you can futilely grasp for meaning outside of God, latching on to any number of empty philosophies. But in the end it’s all the same, isn’t it? Without God, all is “vanity,” as Ecclesiastes says.

Oh, how people need rescue.

But the beautiful thing is that there is hope for rescue, isn’t there?

The same night that I saw Inception, I came home and was reading in Hebrews (which I’d been studying that week). The author says, “This hope [in Christ] we have as an anchor for the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast” (6:19). It’s just such a contrast—this firm confidence, as opposed to the despair of uncertainty and never knowing. The words brought such a wave of assurance and gratitude. Jesus Christ is our certainty, our anchor. Without Him defining reality for us—without Him as our Reality, our reference point—we’re hopeless. But with Him everything makes sense, and we have hope that is sure and certain because He Himself is our hope. I am SO glad.

What incredible compassion we should have for those around us—a lost world without a reference point, without an anchor, without hope. Because we once were there, too. Every one of us was born in sin, alienated from God. But He graciously shone in our hearts, regenerating us, granting us repentance and faith, opening our blind eyes and enlivening our dead hearts.

I’m just reminded all over again of what a miraculous salvation we’ve been given. Have we forgotten the meaninglessness from which we were rescued? Forgotten what a hope we’ve been given? Our Savior truly is the Solid Rock we stand on.

And this also spurs me on to more fervent prayer for God to work in the hearts of the unbelievers I know and meet, and to renewed compassion for them. My prayer is that I—that we—will be motivated to intercede passionately for the lost, and to take every opportunity to proclaim to them the unfathomable riches of Christ.

I’m so thankful for reality, so thankful not just that I have a grasp on reality, but that Reality graciously took hold of me.

A Strange Similarity

The 2010 Resolved Conference. How do I even begin to describe what a blessing it was? I’m overflowing with potential topics for blog posts (and SO excited to start blogging again), and no doubt I’ll have several forthcoming. But, for now, I’ll start with just one thing that’s been coming to mind since the conference. It’s admittedly odd; see, I keep thinking about Moby Dick.

Now, the theme of this year’s Resolved Conference was neither whales nor classic literature. (Shocking, I know.) Actually, the theme was “Jesus Christ.” So…why Moby Dick?

Well, let me try to explain:

Before Resolved, I was reading Moby Dick for the first time and was surprised to find it much more than a story about a man hunting a whale. The book is weighty, not just in size, but in subject matter; it grapples with questions of truth, morality, the soul, free will, reality, etc. The man-chasing-whale plot gives the book its skeleton, but the author (Herman Melville), is constantly using characters, events, and descriptions of whales, whaling, and the sea as springboards into these deeper waters (yes, pun somewhat intended).

You know the basic gist of the story: Captain Ahab has been maimed by the great white whale Moby Dick and now is on an all-consuming, monomaniacal quest for vengeance. Pretty simple. But that, like I said, is just the skeleton, and the book is fleshed out with a multitude of tangents, allusions, and symbolisms—Moby Dick himself being one of the most glaring symbols.

You see, to Ahab, Moby Dick isn’t just a whale. Ishmael explains:

"[Ahab] at last came to identify with him [the whale], not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them…. [A]ll the subtle demonisms of life and thought: all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable, in Moby Dick" (226).

And Ahab isn’t just venting frustrations on an animal; his rage is intentionally directed at something he sees at work in/behind the whale. He tells Starbuck, his first mate:

"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall" (203; italics mine).

What is that “unknown but still reasoning thing” showing itself through the “mask” or “wall” of the whale? Throughout the book, this is alternately referred/alluded to as fate, chance, the gods, and, ultimately, God Himself. Ahab, in effect, has transferred onto the white whale all his angst and anger regarding a divine Power that he sees as impersonal, inscrutable, and cruel—an “intelligent malignity” (225).

A great part of Ahab’s hatred for the whale/Power lies in its combined power and inscrutability. An entire chapter, actually, is spent discussing the whiteness of the whale and how this color-that-is-the-absence-of-color stirs panic and fear in human hearts, because it is the color of inscrutability and indefiniteness. Ahab says: “That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him” (203).

In another place, at the end of a seemingly surface-level discussion about a whale tail, and its overwhelming incomprehensibility, Ishmael (the book’s narrator) says this:

"Dissect him [a whale] how I may, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he may about his face, I say again he has no face" (441; italics mine).

Do you catch the allusion to Moses here? God passing before him and showing him only the tail end of His glory, not His face?

This is where I can’t help but make connections, and the Resolved Conference comes bursting in on the scene by way of incredible contrast.

Rick Holland’s first sermon during the conference was from the book of Job. The book of Job, Rick advised, is NOT primarily about chapters 1 and 2 (the story we’re all familiar with). That portion of the book actually is relatively small; the majority of the book is Job grappling with this question: how do you deal with a God who is both transcendent and imminent—“so far you can’t get to Him but so near you can’t outrun Him”?

It climaxes in chapter 9. Here’s some of what Job says:

11Behold, he passes by me, and I see him not;
he moves on, but I do not perceive him.
12Behold, he snatches away; who can turn him back?
Who will say to him, 'What are you doing?'
15Though I am in the right, I cannot answer him;
I must appeal for mercy to my accuser.
16If I summoned him and he answered me,
I would not believe that he was listening to my voice.
17For he crushes me with a tempest
and multiplies my wounds without cause;
18he will not let me get my breath,
but fills me with bitterness.
19If it is a contest of strength, behold, he is mighty!
If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?
32For he is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him,
that we should come to trial together.
33There is no arbiter between us,
who might lay his hand on us both.

His angst is almost palpable. And do you see why this made/makes me think of Moby Dick? This is what fictional Captain Ahab wrestled with—the very thing Job wrestled with. And it is man’s greatest problem. What do you do with a God who is both inscrutable (unfathomably, unreachably beyond us) but also all-powerful (inescapably involved in all the details of life)? Or, to recast it, how do you deal with a God so transcendent that you can’t touch Him but also so near that you can’t escape His power?

Job lamented this difficulty: God is not a man, and there is such a wide gap between God and man, who could ever umpire between them? There is no one who can stand as advocate and represent each party rightly—no mediator between them.

Ah…and there it is. You know where this is headed, don’t you? Here is the amazing truth:

Job aside, and Ahab aside, and everything else aside, THIS is the answer, and THIS is what overwhelms me with wonder and gratitude. Jesus Christ—He is the Mediator. This is the beautiful mystery of His incarnation and the hypostatic union. In Him we have what Job longed for: a Mediator, an Umpire—the one who can perfectly represent man to God and God to man, because He IS both God and man. He has explained and shown God to us, and He is the Mediator between us, the one who reconciles us to God. Imminence and transcendence meet perfectly in Him.

Astounding.

In Moby Dick, God is inscrutable, and has no face. But that is fiction. The reality is that in Christ, God is made known—and we see His glory in the face of Christ. He is the image of the invisible God. He is “God with Us.” It’s astonishing truth that brings me to my knees.

If I could rewrite the ending to Moby Dick, I’d have Ahab speak as Job spoke at the end of his encounter with God: “I lay my hand on my mouth” (40:4) and “I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (42:6).

I’m incredibly thankful for this reminder.

“For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (2 Cor. 4:6).