With us still

We all love good stories, but the satisfaction we derive from them, whether intellectual, emotional, or moral, tends to bring all enjoyable and meaningful tales within the bounds of the same mental storehouse. This does not involve any drastic adjustments, bending or pruning, as there is always plenty of room in which to file new stories, or new versions of old ones, and for almost every story we can imagine this means we retain it in all its detail and complexity. Any part or facet we fail to recall must be attributed either to inadequacies of our memory or to inattention when the story was being told.

With the passage of time, however, I have become increasingly aware that there is one story I have never quite been able to file away in its entirety. I have heard it over and over again and have thought myself familiar with it, not with every word perhaps, but with its overall shape and direction and with its most important details.
It is the story of Jesus, and, more than anything else, what this Easter has left me with is the knowledge that however often I hear the story, I still fail to know it: however familiar I am with it, I still fail to really understand it. I have failed to grasp the awesome truth of what God has done for mankind as a whole and for each and every one of us as individuals. Even when my faith is at its peak: when I most feel that I really do believe that God ‘gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (John 3:16), I know that I have missed the point again, and must hear the story told once more; I must listen, and read, and pray, and reach out for the fullness of comprehension that evades me still.

My inadequacy is not just the obvious consequence of trying to take in the whole story in one go - I know that to be impossible - it is my inner response to the smallest of chapters, sometimes to a single verse. The first and last parts of the tale are told and retold, and few people have not heard them, but my understanding of them is so vague and superficial. The Christmas and Easter stories stand like solid bookends in our minds and we have filed them away as stories with all the others. That is our mistake; they are not just stories, they are truth. They are not just true stories, they are way beyond the compass of the word ‘story’.
Both have to do with God being present with us: God with us – Emmanuel.

However little I grasp and retain of what He and His followers tell us in His story, He is with us; that I do not doubt.
That is what I hold onto as though my life depended upon it.

Why? – Because it does.
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