This Until Something Else

Reflexively, we tend to distinguish the infinite from the finite in terms of “large and small”, or perhaps “more and less”. But of course we do – because invariably our finite minds places a short cut handle on complex concepts or any mystery that extends beyond the limitations of language’s ability to explain. In this regard, we maintain a predictable level of comprehension that can be easily managed. This is how our perception becomes our reality. Therefore anything new to us just becomes more to consider, ever enlarging our frame of reference – which can lead us to the foolish conclusion that everything we don’t know is just more information we just haven’t learned yet . . . as if our finite frame of reference could ever come to grasp the infinite.

Here’s the thing – we don’t even know how finite we are! As contingent beings all of our reference points are a preexisting context we inherit within the limitations of time and space. We are like a fish in a fishbowl – the otherness of what might exist outside of the fishbowl, all that is untethered by our contextual expectations would seem alien to our frame of reference . . . to the point where our understanding of ourselves would be immediately in crisis by such otherness. Because the truth is – we have no idea just how much of a reductively self-referencing perception of reality we maintain.

And it only follows logically that a reductive perception of reality would produce reductive expectations – which we often find on full display in the reckless way our desires drag us from one thing to another. As if we could somehow find a secret passage way out of the box that only the desires of our heart could know. Interestingly enough, St Augustine recognized this dilemma in his Confessions as our having “disordered desires” – having allowed the one desire that was meant to place all other desires into alignment, to be abandoned, until every desire we have becomes a reductively selfish preoccupation unto itself . . . insatiable and dissolute.

So we live in a perpetual state of “. . . this until something else” – never satisfied. Our finite assumption is that having more of what is finite will somehow bring resolution to what we long for most . . . if we could only identify it. But what we long for most is the infinite – Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that God “. . . set eternity in the human heart”. Being made in God’s image, by design the finite has been given a unique window into the infinite – heaven and earth reconciled. Therefore the only desire that can bring order and proportion to every other desire . . . is our desire for God.

But let us be clear – we don’t stand barefoot before the burning bush of the “infinite now” that is God, and then relegate him to some reductively safe corner of our lives as some plastic Jesus talisman. Because if God is to be our ultimate desire, if we are to invite the infinite to animate our finite hearts and minds – then it will occur because in God’s mercy he has first invited us to glimpse his glory . . . lifting us up, and out of our finite way of imagining him. The mystery of God calls you – can you hear him calling to you to follow?

So perhaps you should follow barefoot
so that you might see what only God can show you