Day Twenty Two — Saturday

Hosea 6

"Come, let us return to the Lord; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us;
he has struck down, and he will bind us up,

2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him.

3 Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord.; his appearing is as sure as the dawn;
he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth."

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In any serious spiritual life we must come to a gulf that cannot be crossed from our side. We must find ourselves stripped of all expectations and aids, all human programs and procedures, as we stand at the edge of the ocean of infinity. Our finite ladders -- of theology, of spiritual exercises, of psychological theory and political programs -- do not reach across to the other side. The gap is not bridged from where we stand. We are emptied of all we possessed. We discover our true poverty, our radical dependence on God.

Paradoxically, we never reach this point unless, taking the concrete seriously, we do identify what we love and need and even plot. But in doing so we will find we have moved out, disidentified, as we come to see that nothing human delivers us across the gap to the other side. Here the mystery of the two natures of Jesus bear in upon us, for there is no Christ without Jesus, but it is Jesus who comes to show us the Christ who lives in God.

Parabola Ann Ulanov "The God You Touch" vol. XII, No#3, August 1987.