Mortal Insufficiency

My last Gilead post at least until I reread it in another year or two. This passage is so remarkable that I recommend not even reading what I write further down. 

There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world's mortal insufficiency to us. Augustine says the Lord loves each of us an only child, and this has to be true. "He will wipe the tears from all faces." It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required.

Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave--that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing.

The sublime beauty of this book overpowers me. I don't remember this passage landing with as much weight the first time I read the book. I wasn't much of a reader back then and tended to treat reading as conquest more than absorption. 

I think part of the reason, too, that it didn't land is that I did not love this world the way I do now. In other words, I never felt my mortal insufficiency to the world, only it's own towards me. Love of the world is a fraught thing for a Christian. I exchanged emails with a friend this week on the temptation of pantheism. It is real and especially so for people who love the outdoors like I do. 

But the fear of pantheism shouldn't lead us into the opposite error of denying the splendor and beauty (more than we can bear), the God-hauntedness, the very groaning of creation. It, like us, waits for redemption. It, like us, is marred by sin. It, like us, will be made new. Christ came because he so loved the world, as my son memorized when he was not yet three. I have no reason to think that love confined simply to humans.