A source of endless delight and perplexity to me is the way God works through what we say.
This brought me up short again as I was perusing TSO's Spanning the Globe. While it is always delightful to be mentioned (a good reason for avoiding the reading of that particular post) I was stunned to find an excerpt from a piece written here recently.
Stunned because the piece was an attempt, a not very clear or good one I thought, to articulate a truth I have felt in my bones for a long time and which is just beginning to make a kind of sense to me. But there I see a piece of it.
My point here is that we do not know which of our words will strike people and convict them. Our most carefully planned and deliberately calculated arguments may have no sway at all. All of our clever words and our verbal tricks get trotted out and no one pays any attention. But those words of perplexity, of struggle, of attempting to articulate the truth as we see it--those words are authentic in a way we cannot recognize and they will ring true to others. So, we are all in the position of Moses told to speak to Pharoah--we do not have the words. And yet if we speak the words we are given in truth and obedience, we may find hearts moved unexpectedly. I know I was surprised and delighted that somehow something escaped from what I thought a complete muddle.
God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. You do not know through what or to whom God will speak to in your writing.
I have seen that although not in the exact way you mention here. However, I am continually bemused at how God uses things I have just tossed off with no thought ... it is humbling, suprising, and delightful as you say. Just one more illustration to me of how, as St. Escriva said, we are the envelope and God is the letter.
Steven,
Is that the Spanning the Globe installment that begins with the "macaroni and cheese is a vegetable" quotation?
Dear Tom,
Indeed it is.
shalom,
Steven
Tom is the master. Simultaneously taking us both down a peg. I stand in awe, as always.