LRC, Houston - the weekends-free church in Houston, Texas

You haven’t really lived until you’ve had an encounter with God to which there are no words to describe. Has the Holy Spirit ever shown you something that just excited you beyond reason? You rush to tell a friend all about it and when you are done, you see that blank stare on their face and you realize they do’t get it. You also sense that they think you’re a little crazy.

Like, what have you been smoking?

Let me with tongue-in-cheek suggest that you’ve not been saved unless you’ve had this experience at least a couple of times. Remember, we are FINITE beings and we’re relating to people what we know, or think we know, about what we can’t know- God, the INFINITE being. Know what I mean? So, we babble on.

Our egos are relentless though. So we create formulas for everything imaginable. Denominations after denominations are established, each with the latest secret or insight. We have pushed religion (who needs that anyway) into a MUST KNOW category. By that I mean, it’s okay to be wrong, as long as you have a theory. What is anathema, is to not have a theory. Worse yet, to ascribe to a grand mystery in God, acknowledging that we don’t know, oh so many things.

I confess! I am a babe in the Lord- at 62!

Yet I have the hunger for spiritual things, like a 350 lb defensive lineman has for food.

Let me simply say that not knowing (the ego hates such admission), but desperately searching is an honest confession. In fact, if there’s anything we are void of in the American religious scene is more mystery, romance, and adventure. I believe the operative word in such an environment is faith! So, the next time you can’t explain what you’re feeling, babble on anyway. It sure beats pretending you’ve got it all together.

Heinrich Zimmer said it perfectly- “The best things cannot be talked about. The second best things are usually misunderstood because we are using images and metaphors to point toward the first. So we spend most of our lives talking about the third best things because we need to talk and we long to be understood.”

So, don’t get frustrated by not understanding a lot of what I am writing. I don’t myself.

Why should you? And, is that all bad?