22Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.23For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.24The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.
Do you know what a blivet is? No, I didn't either. It is an undecipherable figure, an optical illusion, an impossible object. It is a figure whose ending and beginning seem to blend together and are yet impossible to reconcile, impossible to separate. The U.S. Army uses the same word to refer to "an unmanageable situation". A blivet cannot be explained, cannot be imagined, and cannot be figured out. It is totally anathema to our world, where everything has to be explained, planned, and carried out.
Perhaps Lent is our blivet season. It throws us off a bit. After all, it counters everything we know. It's a lot like God. We want to know God; we strive to know God. And, yet, God remains elusive to us, sort of a "blivet", if you will. Now don't get me wrong--I don't think that God is playing some colossal game of hide-and-seek. God is not TRYING to remain unknown. God is not unknown; we just don't know how to know God. In fact, don't you think God desires to be made known, desires for us to get so close to the Godself that we know God?
We like to think of God as omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and unchangeable (sorry, couldn't come up with an "omni" for that) And yet, maybe those depictions short-change us and, in turn, short-change God. God does not want,- I think, to be "omni" anything. God instead calls us to be knowing, to be present, and, if the truth be known, God gave up that omnipotent thing to free will. God is powerful, yes. But God gave up a part of the Godself for us and a part of the all-powerful Godself to us, to our free will, to our humanity.
I know...this doesn't really make sense. Maybe we have a blivet God, who gives the illusion of being omnipotent and omnipresent and omni-everything but instead created the very likeness of the Godself (yes, that would be us!) to be that way, the essence of who God is throughout the earth.
So, in this Lenten season, let us walk this way and be the image of this omni-everything God.
Grace and Peace,
Shelli
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