DAY 232

TRANSCENDENT IMMANENCE

Psalm 103 & 104 and 1 Corinthians 2

Transcendent-Immanence: two rather fancy religious words that try and describe God. Transcendent: that which lies beyond the limits of ordinary understanding, beyond comprehension. Immanent: an indwelling and inherent experience.

Both words try and describe our ideas and experience of God.

The Psalms today seek to describe the magnificent indescribable majesty and power of God. Verse after verse present a dimension or phase of God’s greatness: the Lord has set his throne in heaven…Bless the Lord, you angels of his…Bless the Lord, all you his host…You have set the earth upon its foundations…you water the mountains from your dwelling on high…Certainly our scientific minds can appreciate how the Psalmist, through his prose, is seeking to describe that which is beyond the limits of our ordinary understanding.

The Psalms also seek to describe the intimacy with which God interacts with His creation. Within each verse is a very human experience of God: He…heals your infirmities…He satisfies you with good things…As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us…healing – satisfaction – forgiveness…the list of human experiences goes on. And these experiences flow from, and are shared with us, by God.

In Jesus Christ the transcendence and immanence of God is on display for all to know. God Incarnate – come to earth in flesh – is certainly God Immanent. How might Jesus display God’s transcendence? We have hints of transcendence as he walks on water, as he creates food, as he raises the dead to life…these are all “beyond the limits of our ordinary understanding.” People throughout the years, because these events are beyond the ordinary, have talked themselves out of them, and in fact dismissed them. Then Jesus shatters everything ordinary through His Cross and Resurrection…it is why this is what Paul proclaims, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

Jesus, this ordinary man, this man who so quickly connects with us, this man who, we all have a nagging sense is more than a man…allows us in. He allows us to experience Him. He is immanently present to us. But then He is so much more, so beyond, so willing to stand silent before Pilate, so forgiving of Peter, so other that His life witnesses transcendence to us…we stand in awe and in the presence of a Person who is there, but somehow beyond.

Finally God plants Himself in us. This transcendent God indwells our hearts and through this miracle of the Holy Spirit, allows us to be swept away beyond our knowing in God’s love…and yet know, deeply, that God does love us…Bless the Lord, O my soul. Hallelujah! (Psalm 104:37)