There's More to Life than Ideas

Acts 28:23-31 (click to read passage)

Reflection:

            Christianity is not a set of ideas to be believed, but a deeper reality into which we are invited to live. In the modern world, reason has been hailed as the greatest good. The scientific method, combined with deductive reasoning, tells us “truths” about our world, right? So the most important thing must be thinking the right things about God, right?

But what we must struggle to understand is that our intellect only gives us one set of truths about the world…rational thinking only reveals one aspect of reality. God is not an idea that we have to wrap our minds around, but instead the very source of love and the very source of life.

Paul is right to quote Isaiah…and Isaiah was right to list the challenges to faith like he did. Indeed, faith involves more than just intellectual assent – it involves listening, looking, and a sensitivity of the heart that perceives the goodness of God all around us.

Maybe we have been de-sensitized (literally) into thinking that thinking is all there is. Maybe the Christ child is inviting us out into deeper waters than our intellects can allow. Maybe this Christmas will be about listening, looking, and sensing with our hearts the goodness of God that comes in ways we’ll never figure out with our heads (in fact, figuring it out with our heads is not the point).

Prayer: God of love, give us the grace to trust you even when, or especially when, our intellects fail us. In that trust, re-sensitize us to your loving presence. Amen.