What am I supposed to do with words that explain my daily reality. How do we begin to explain what it feels like to be so completely unknown, to be a foreigner in the middle of my own city. We are not of this world. It is cliche' and it is painfully true. "Beloved what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him." (1 John 3:1) Here is the truth. If the world gets your God, you are probably telling the story wrong.
What do we do with a God that does not exaggerate? What do we do with a God who is merciful and jealous and mighty and humble? What do we do with a God who asks for our everything, who says go and sin no more? Oh this God, He so captivates my heart that I forever feel unworthy and at all times I have this deep longing that I cannot explain even to myself. I want to run, to just run around and yell at whoever will listen. I want to stand on a street corner and hold a sign that says, "You have no idea." That's what I want to do because it is how I feel at all times. I see people and I don't even know where to begin. I want to make t-shirts and buttons. I want to just stand there with tape over my mouth and just point to my sign over and over as I wave. Just this endless pointing and waving thing. That is what I want to do there on the corner with my sign.
Oh that I could explain this upside down kingdom where the point isn't self actualization. How do you explain a kingdom forged in weakness, a kingdom founded on prayer and fasting. How do you explain Jesus to a world that does not know Him. They stare at us with empty, blank stares. They have decided that He is not real or even worse they have decided that He does not care.
And then it all makes perfect sense as John nicely puts it. The world does not know us because they do not know Him. See, it is a rubik's cube only way worse. It's a catch 22 only way more tragic because eternity is at stake. They cannot know us because they cannot know Him. And we can tell them about Him with all our cool fancy tricks and we can make it way easier for them to understand (because God is so complicated?) Heck we can settle for raised hands during dark ministry times. Why bother with the formality. We have almost declared everyone saved if they will at least admit He was a real person.
The truth is that He is other than. This God is not like us. The truth is that the world does not know Him and they cannot know Him until they are no longer of the world. He makes us new (set's us free) and then we open our eyes and then we know Him. We finally see see Him. It's the matrix without the karate and the plug that goes into our brain. Whoa, I know kung-fu. Something like that. I wave, I point, I hold my sign. "You have no idea." It's all I want to say, ever.
