Groping as in a Mirror... for Something that is not that Far Away

Go read Acts 17.


In my Bible, my cursive scrawl in the top margin over Acts 17 reads "I love this story for some reason..." And I do. There are so many things about it that strike me.


The basic gist, for those who haven't read the whole chapter, is that Paul is waiting around in Athens after some run-ins in Thessalonica, and his spirit "provokes" him because of all the idol worship he sees in Athens. So, he spends a  lot of time "reasoning in the synagogue" with all kinds of people-- Jews, "God-fearing Gentiles," and Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. Paul ends up speaking to the Areopagus, a religious and educational council, and what he presents to them is the gospel but said in a way I've never ever heard a Southern preacher tell it:

For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.' Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we also are His children.'

Paul goes on for only a few verses to talk about repentance, judgment, and Jesus's resurrection. At this point, some people begin to, as the New American Standard translation reads, "sneer." Some of Paul's listeners are skeptical of the resurrection stuff, as many of my contemporaries would be, and I'll admit I too have a tendency to turn up my nose when the gospel story is told laid on thick with lots of references to righteous judgment and eternity and rewards and other unfortunate evangelical buzz words.


Not all of Paul's listeners are completely put off, though. Some people say instead, "We shall hear you again concerning this," and that's one of the things I love about this passage. Some people want to hear again. They're intrigued. Something in it, crazy though it may be, easy as it would be for the academic mind to dismiss, seems true.  Somehow there's something true... maybe... about these ideas.


And how did Paul get their attention? Anyone who knows me knows why I love this part. He quotes their poets! Not Scripture, not Jewish law, not what he thinks or what Jesus said to him on the road to Damascus-- their poets. He points to their religion, to their shrines, to their obvious, obsessive desire to honor whatever god that might be out there to worship and shows them what they're lacking, gives them a name for the God that is unknown to them, the one true God. I love that on so many levels. I love it so much it makes me not want to try to explain  myself but just keep saying  how much I love it. I love it. I love how Paul talks to them from their culture's perspective, I love that he quotes poetry, and I love how the whole thing points, as Romans 1:19-20 does, to the fact that something in humanity knows God even when He is unknown to them.


I love that verses 24-28 are all one sentence, like Paul has to connect all the ideas together in one tumbling string of related ideas to get them all together like they can't be separated, even by a breath. They're that closely connected, flowing from each other. They're that urgent to say.


Perhaps best of all, though, I love this part, so I'll type it yet again--

He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they might seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist.

Reasons abound for loving this... I identify with it so much, the feeling of seeking, groping reaching out to Him, stretching for Him as if He is so far away and so hard to grasp. It reminds me of one of the parts I love from Ecclesiastes--

He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. Ecclesiastes 3:11  

Both are comforting in some ways-- God is in control, God has determined all the appointed and appropriate times just as they should be, eternity is set in our hearts, and, according to Paul, finding Him is a possibility. He made us and appointed our times so that perhaps we might find  Him. Both are perhaps even more frustrating. Paul qualifies finding God with "if," "perhaps," and "might." These are big ifs here. Solomon throws in a "yet" and says that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. That kills me. Can I find what I'm looking for or not? What is the point? Then, though, even in that frustration, that despair at never knowing and finding fully, the end of Acts 17:27 envelopes and embraces in hope-- He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist.


This whole life is groping and grasping, struggling for the point and more often than not coming up one-sided or broken and then just digging in and sharpening some more. Yet the elusive point is out there. God is the point, and He is not that far away.


The best part of 1 Corinthians 13 to me is verse 12-- 

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.

Amen. The reaching and the grasping-- or trying to-- are not in vain. He is not far from each of us, and one day we're actually, finally, fully going to be able to understand that. Until that day, I just have to keep reminding myself that God is not as far off as He seems, that life can never be completely in vain while that is true, and that life is in the seeking. Seeking, seeking, until one day we know, until one day we fully live and move and exist in Him and understand it as we do.