A Word With You?

God as Word.  I don’t know why my waking was entranced by that.  It was like snorkeling along the edge of the lake, Deep Lake, where we went each summer with the kids, weightless and mesmerized by the bright world there, green waving things within which were schools of fish, like gems in a tapestry.  It was like opening my eyes in the hammock that summers in our back ward, opening them because I hear the music of the breeze and look up and see innumerable shades of yellow-green undulating beneath a blue dome of sky.  Word.  Word.

Why did I wake in wonder?  These days we have an oracle, one so easy to consult.  We call it Google.  I typed in “God as word” and
, unsatisfied with what it gave me, typed in “and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us”, from the opening poem of the Gospel of John. 

I came upon a sermon by theologian John Piper that resonated with my waking song. Words are so effective in entering us, in moving us, in building us up or tearing us down, bringing us toward our best selves or deterring us.  Piper finds it intriguing that Christ is called the word, and not, for example, the deed or the thought or the feeling.

Deeds are faulty attempts at enacting words.  Words are perfect, ideal.  They are the stars on which we navigate.  My college mentor and friend Vaughn Adams, who I met as philosophy professor said once that “do as I say, but for God’s sake, not as I do.”  “Don’t live by my example”, he said, because it would be imperfect, falling short of his words.  His words could be perfect.  He could say “love” perfectly, but not do love perfectly.

Thoughts, Piper wrote, remain dormant within us, are not sent out.  Ingo Maurer, who might be called a “lighting designer” like Pavarotti is called a “singer”, sees light as a messenger of all that exists around us.  The image at the beginning of this blog, the winged bulb, expresses this whimsically, wonder-fully.  Words are thoughts with wings.  It is their nature to fly, to carry idea to us, as light carries image.

Feelings, he says, finally, are ambiguous, so easily misunderstood, relying on words to be explained.  He says, “One might say, in summary, calling Jesus ‘the Word’ implies that he is ‘God-Expressing-Himself.’”

A word is given to us, in waking, in wonder, and too often in a hurry.  Words come in bunches, in torrents, in piles, in herds possessed and going over the cliff.  But a word, single, that we can walk around and look at, can wonder about, can watch grow, insinuating itself in us . . . now that’s something!

Sit with a word today.  Consider whether it is a word that you would be willing to become.
 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.