What the angel said

The angel said to John, "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." I always find that idea staggering, though I can see in the abstract that it has to be true. I and you and all the rest of the Christians are carrying around something holy and world-changing. The gospel's power to change hearts and lives is in God's Spirit, and we are charged with carrying the message around.

No angel ever said that the reasoned disputations of theologians are the spirit of prophecy. I suppose my point lately has been that God's truth works sometimes through, but sometimes despite our human understandings, for it is higher than our thoughts and our ways, and we should be pleased if only our intellects do not draw us too often into an embarrassing lack of real insight.

Did you ever wonder why the apostle Paul said the peace of God passes all understanding? What he said is a clue to something I try sometimes to say in these pages. There is more going on than we account for with our understanding. There is more going on besides what we see and think. Indeed, it is abundantly more than we can ask or imagine.

I am not sure how to convey my vision of human understanding's smallness, narrowness and incompleteness to the person who has not yet seen reasoning prove useless. Maybe only that experience will do it.

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