Where do we find God in our daily lives? I guess the first part of answering that question leans on one important assumption: we are looking for God. The complex and hidden mysteries of life can be searched out with many different lenses, depending on one’s belief structure. In our discussion here, we will presume that the lens that leads to greater understanding and wholeness of life is illuminated by finding and conversing with God. And, to be even more specific, (because the divine nature of “God” is a complex thing as well), we proceed with a particularly Western Christian understanding of God. I preface all that follows with this statement because our book study group reflected on what people throughout the world might think of the subjects we will soon encounter, and we agreed that the conversation would take different paths, depending on where the conversation was held. This follows an important point made by Mark McIntosh in his first chapter of Mysteries of Faith: context provides clues to conversation and helps us to discover greater meaning.

McIntosh offers a simple example that makes an insightful point: when flowers are given to someone as a gift, what is the sentiment that goes along with that gift? It depends (context): is the gift given at an office birthday party or to a special someone at a high school formal? You might add to the list – are the flowers placed in your home prior to a party or planted along the edges of your back patio. As you can see, the context changes the meaning of the gift. McIntosh also gives an example that speaks to personal relationships with others: you enter the office of someone you have never met and notice a simple drawing on the desk…a drawing that was likely created by someone with very basic skills in the art. Is the drawing a gift from the person’s child or is it a drawing made by the person many years ago as a gift to their parent (now deceased) and kept as a keepsake of former days or is it a new drawing, created by the person who recently took up a new hobby of pen & ink art? All these are possibilities, and if you had a close relationship with the office owner, you would better understand the “mystery” of the drawing. Becoming close to God and God’s Word is much the same, and can be done in “three moments” according to McIntosh.

The first moment of drawing closer to God through the practice of theology is the practice of seeing differently. There are experiences in life that explode before our eyes: Moses and the burning bush; the beauty of delicate snow flakes or ice crystals gently sitting on early spring flowers; or a peaceful baby sleeping. However, much of life is more illusive than that…more like the drawing on the stranger’s desk. In order to begin to perceive the meaning behind the mystery, we must draw closer to the source. And in our search for the meaning of God’s world, we draw close by reading God’s Word: holy Scripture. McIntosh writes, “For Christians, the context of the world’s life is provided by the story of God’s life with the world…This story of God’s life with us is the deep landscape against which we begin to notice and recognize the mystery of love at work in everything.” The stories and meanings and lessons of Scripture bring us into the mind of God and the intention that God has for all of God’s people. If we are able to reflect on God’s intentions for us and connect these intentions to our daily lives, we deepen our understanding of our Creator.

If the first moment of theology is discovering a deeper understanding of God by engaging in God’s story, through God’s holy Word; the second moment of theology relies on our ability to be open to receive and form the habits of life we discover from God’s story. McIntosh provides a helpful example for this moment: discovering life-changing habits from reading a novel. He writes, “any life-changing process by reading a novel is not simply a mechanical process: you do not read a novel and then go and imitate its characters. It is more interior, as though the vision and the meaning of the story came to inspire you, to dwell in you, and gradually to transform your own thinking and acting.” In the case of Scripture, McIntosh says, we do not do the interior work alone but with the help of God’s Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit breaks open God’s Word for us and gives us the gift of receiving that Word into our lives, and being examples for others. McIntosh adds, “hearing and receiving God’s Word so that it can reveal the truth of our lives is going to mean a very active kind of listening. It is going to mean that we will only truly hear this Word insofar as it comes to be spoken with the very stuff of our lives…Being able to recite the dictionary definition of joy is not really the same as knowing the meaning of joy by being joyful ourselves.” Living the Word of God is the means to entering into the deeper meaning of God’s intentions and helping us to better understand the context of life’s mysteries.

This brings us to the third and final moment of theology: entering into the sacred conversation with God. The Christian tradition understands God as the divine loving relationship of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The very relational nature of God means that there is an eternal, ongoing conversation inherent in the trinitarian essence of God, and we are invited into that conversation by means of following Jesus. Of the power of this third moment, McIntosh writes, “Not only are we invited into the conversation, but we turn out to be, in our own inimitably recalcitrant but cherishable way, part of the very subject matter of the conversation…the third moment of theology begins when we start to sense that in and through all the noise and confusion, the grace and hope and grit and glory of the world, there is a deep conversation going on.” If we allow ourselves the gift of listening in to God’s conversation, we discover the sacred stories behind the mysteries of God’s world.

McIntosh concludes the first chapter with the idea of “theology as prayer.” But I believe it is important to understand his point of “prayer” is bigger and more expansive than what is often understood as “saying a prayer.” I believe it is closer to McIntosh’s intention here to say something like, “theology is life as prayer.” A life lived as one who lives a “prayerful life in God’s world” is a life lived in the context of understanding God’s Word and constantly trying to orient one’s life in that direction. McIntosh writes, “theology, as it takes place in the strain and struggle of our broken world, is the costly mission of Jesus to hear the self-giving love of God, to embody and enact the communion with God, and to be the reconciling Word of God…and it is this which opens our hearts toward one another, giving us eyes to see as God sees, a language to converse with one another right through the hurts we give.” And finally, “Christian theology is the attempt to allow the divine meaning that rustles through every page of our life story to be clarified and highlighted by means of our fellowship with Christ the Word made flesh – and so, finally to become embodied in reflection and understanding.”

I believe McIntosh makes many insightful points in his opening chapter, both setting up the remainder of his book and also clarifying his vision of why a life with God, in Christ, is distinctly different and uniquely sacred from other ways of life, even “good and charitable” ways of life that are not centered in God’s story, found in God’s Word. I hope you will continue with me as we dive deeper into the meaning and understanding of a life of theology and prayer. Peace be with you.