Curtis Childs was the
guest speaker at a local church service. I watched it weeks after the fact and found it insightful. Curtis articulated how God engages in dialogue. The cavernous gap between the wealth of God's knowledge, and that minuscule portion that any of us comprehend makes it all the more
unexpected.
He asks questions.
"Adam, where are you?"
“Hagar, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
“What are you doing here, Elijah?”
“Do you want to be made well?”
“Whose image and inscription is this?”
“Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Shall I surely bear a child, since I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord?"
It could be argued that God already understood the answers to these and a multitude of connected queries. But apparently God is immune to argument. Even when the Pharisees challenged him to convict the woman caught in adultery he stooped on the ground to write in the sand.
“Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?”
Curtis went on to name two facets of the human mind. There is a creative side and a defensive one. Examining our intentions before we begin to dialogue can illuminate which half of the brain we are likely to get a response from. When God invited Elijah to describe what he was doing, or Jesus gave the cripple lying by the pool of Bethesda a chance to explain his wishes, there was not a hint of an attack. Even as He asked why Sarah was laughing, she wondered too. The inquiry itself
opened up room for self awareness.
There are times when I am ignorant of where I am going, or what I am doing. Such questions do more to inform me than the One who made me.
The climate for debate these days has slid away from altruistic exchange toward hurling rocks. But this is not because God is handing them to us.
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!" Matthew 23
