Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.
Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters, Harper & Row, 1982, pp. 40-41.
This is very much an Advent thing. We say, "Even so, come Lord Jesus!" What would we do if he did? What do we do when he does come to each of us, knocking at the dusty doors of our hearts? If we all were truly to open our hearts to him, what an Advent revolution would ensue! We wouldn't be putting up posters on the church notice board, dropping leaflets through letterboxes - we'd be breaking out those signal flares, sending up the maroons. The storm of grace would be unstoppable, justice would roll down like rivers on the thirsty land, and righteousness would irrigate the barren plains of greed and compromise.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
1 comment:
What a fabulous quote from Dillard. I have always felt we were playing with fire... and not just matchsticks but volcanoes!
Post a Comment