Who asks the questions
Dear Friends
‘Mega flood cut Britain from France in a matter of days’
(Daily Mail July 19th 2007 reporting the journal Nature)
Given the rain we have had this month, who would doubt it? Having spent ten days in the Spanish Pyrenees discovering how the Iberian Peninsula and the European mainland collided, lifting turbidites from the sedimentary seabed into mountains with fossils, and dinosaur remains exposed, who knows what is possible?
In the pace of life, one hustles to these places with a set of presumptions and beliefs, hoping to have one’s faith confirmed and fears allayed. In practice, one encounters phenomena, events and language beyond imagination. Definitions as simple as those for solids and liquids give way as one contemplates the consistency of the sea floor being lifted, wrinkled, compressed and shrunk. The forces required to change the shape of continents are beyond comprehension. The mind races with a slurry of solutions that tax the limitations of one’s scientific exposure. Questions as to when, and at what speed, soon dissipate. Some phenomena suggest millions of years, others just days, all in the same place. How can one know? That life of any description survived and emerged from these chaotic contortions is in itself a miracle.
Timothy Radcliffe OP asks: What is the point of Christianity? His answer is that God is the point of Christian faith. Nature, God’s second book, points us to God where He Himself poses the questions. That we should be so arrogant to presume answers represents the limitations of our capacity to query. Our responsibility portfolios, the concerns on our little desks with their temperamental laptops, pale into insignificance in the face of the Almighty. We just don’t get our heads around how mighty, Almighty really is.
I am not sure precisely what I have learned from all this, save to say that the hymn ‘I sing the mighty power of God, that made the mountains rise’ is never far from my thoughts.
I trust that you will take the space of the summer recess to experience how big God really is, to see His horizons and lift those we serve beyond the arguments and petitions of mediocrity. Thank you for being prepared to expand the hopes and prayers of the suppressed, depressed and those conceptually compressed.
Yours truly,
Victor