The Sound of Life's Unspeakable Beauty by Martin Schleske;

Author:Martin Schleske;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, Co.

Every beautiful thing is an anthem to hope, the hope of what will be when God will someday gather us to himself and complete what happened to him in this world. We will see what glorified him, but also what disfigured him. We will then see what will be accepted and what will be surrendered. Wheat and weeds. It will be clear what we were to him, we who saw him at his weakest and served him, in that our strength bows down just as God’s strength bowed down for the sake of life and the existence of this world.

Consequently, I have to ask myself how much reverence I can sustain. When we turn to the hurt, the weak, and the broken and acknowledge that life has the right to expect something of us, then the kingdom of God is near! The future world speaks to us now: “Have courage! For we already see the beauty among us today, awakened by your faithfulness and belief” (compare with John 15:8, 16).

This is the only way I can understand Jesus. He did not bring a power-obsessed Judas fantasy into the world. On the contrary. He went so far as to say that a person can do violence against God’s kingdom! (See Luke 16:16.) Humans are capable of harming God. We must respect this. Otherwise our view of God will turn bitter.

“Christ” with Plato and Lao-Tse

When I encounter something foreign to me, I do not want to see only that which is my own. Instead, it is like building up the layers of a gorgeous violin varnish: I cook the pigments from different substances and shade it with metal salts, then put it in my little mill and grind it all up into the finest of grain-sized pieces. (More on this in Chapter 11.) If you apply another thin glaze of orange over the first coat, the shade will be intensified but will leave the color rather garish and commonplace. So I borrowed a method from a painter friend of mine to rein in the orange using its complementary hue. No one will ever see that wispy layer of blue, but it will give the orange a wonderfully mellow quality and depth.

Likewise, it is important not just to reinforce our thoughts with what is already like them, but to seek out complementary hues and thereby help gently to mature our grasp of the truth. This deepening is joyful when this other new element sounds familiar, and stressful when it departs from your views. But both are necessary: to allow yourself to be strengthened and to allow yourself to be held back. You can tell when a person associates only with like-minded people; his truth can be loud and garish. Only those who let themselves be irritated will truly learn.

Great masters outside of the Hebrew school of thought have recognized deep truths concerning the servant of God. No one would claim that the wisdom from all the major world cultures is all the same,

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