John 10:22-30 At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly." Jesus answered, "I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand. The Father and I are one.”
Reflection Our human experience occupies both the measurable arithmetic world in which 1+1=2 and the immeasurable infinite world in which 1+1+1+1….=1. And all is well with the world and us until we begin to ask questions designed for the 1+1=2 world of the 1+1+1+1….=1 world.
While attending a dinner party the conversation turned to “God moments,” experiences of Divine Presence in our lives. A woman I will call Corinne asked, “What if I have never had one of those St. Paul knock your socks off ah-hah moments?” Sounding skeptical and impoverished she continued, “What if God has never shown up for me?”
Now Corinne is a woman who loves more things than I can count; mountains and deserts, being outdoors, sports, travel, music and dancing. She has a passion for helping and healing people and animals and an enormous family of siblings, kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews who regularly surround and delight her.
Here is the thing. Many of us will never have knock you off your horse, cannonball moments writ large with neon. And, all of us are having God moments all of the time, but they are more like the prophet Elijah’s experience on Mount Horeb during which he did not encounter God in a great wind, an earthquake or fire but in the "sound of sheer silence" from which he received direction for his life. (1 Kings 19.11-18)
1+1+1+1….=1in the infinite world of Divine Presence. Applying rules for arithmetic to the immeasurable renders us impoverished as Corinne who like the Jews in John's gospel text demand, “Tell us plainly if you are the Messiah?” Corinne and the Jews are frustrated and impoverished because they are applying rules for arithmetic to the infinite. The poet writer of Psalm 46 articulates the rule for solving the mysterious equation 1+1+1+1….=1 this way, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Ps 46.10)
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