Beyond Me
As we go through the day, each of us encounters many happenings; we perceive things we recall and things that we simply let blur and fade. I am sure our brain stores it all somewhere, but much of it nearly irretrievable. This is a merciful quality known as the reticular activating system. Imagine recalling with equal weight, everything you heard, felt, saw, smelled, and tasted in your conscious hours of the day. It would be a traffic jam rendering ordered thought impossible.
Some kind of valuing system tags certain things to make them store differently in the brain. The emotions figure in, as do our hunches about the good which certain information can do for us. Sometimes I am bopping along through my prep for worship, and I tune in to the little prayer we call the Collect of the Day. Normally I can scan these and let them immediately fade and drift away. From time to time, they snag me. I have come to see them as little repositories of theological insight. They posit thoughts about God and divine relationship from the collective development of Christian thought through the centuries.
We do not value all insights equally; some pique further thought, others we ignore. The prayer coming this Sunday got me thinking. Here is the central thought that captivated me: some things we grasp, and some things are beyond us. When it comes to God, we comprehend what we can, but the infinite remainder of the reality surpasses our understanding. We can seek perpetually with all the tools we know to use, and there will still be deeper spiritual exploration to do. Let us dig for a bit into the prayer that follows:
O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire.
Working backward from the last line, we see the claim that God has promises for you so good you can’t even construct them in your imagination. You cannot desire them because they surpass your capacity to conceive of them. What God promises, God can deliver. The key to obtaining the unfathomably good, if we see the preceding phrase, is loving God completely, above all and in all things, but how is that possible?
It is true that the complete love of God with all that is in us feels beyond us too. The phrase preceding that one, gives assurance that God provides that kind of love to us. God is willing to pour into our hearts such love that it flows in abundance back to the Source. Open up the chalice of your heart, because God is generously pouring. Finally, it is clearly stated in the first line of the collect the claim repeated at the end. We address God as the One who prepares things well beyond our understanding. They come to all choosing to love God.
The generous Holy One prepares, promises, and even provides our means to receive. We choose to love God how we are able. The Spirit multiplies that in us many times over, and the result is our encounter of incalculably good things promised to us. Now, aren’t you glad we took the time to notice the implicit claims of this prayer? Why I don’t do it more regularly is beyond me.