What we miss when we try to fence God in

July 9, 2013 | Uncategorized

I have this Thomas Merton quote taped to my desk right above my keyboard and below my monitor. I kind of need this reminder on a pretty constant basis. Every time I read it, it’s new to me. Every time it’s a revelation. (I’m a little thick when it comes to trying to capture God.)

Here you go:

“God approaches our minds by receding from them. We can never fully know Him if we think of Him as an object of capture, to be fenced in by the enclosure of our own ideas.

We know Him better after our minds have let Him go.

The Lord travels in all directions at once.

The Lord arrives from all directions at once.

Wherever we are, we find that He has just departed. Wherever we go, we discover that He has just arrived before us.

Our rest can be neither in the beginning of this pursuit, nor in the pursuit itself, nor in its apparent end. For the true end, which is Heaven, is an end without end. It is a totally new dimension, in which we come to rest in the secret that God must arrive at the moment of God’s departure; God’s arrival is at every moment and God’s departure is not fixed in time.”   — Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

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