News Archive
Reveals and conceals
In his address on Sunday morning, Mark talked about the transcendence and the imminence of God. The transcendence of God is his 'otherness'. His imminence is his 'closeness' (even dwelling within us). They go hand in hand and can't be separated, and when we lose one of them we lose the divine mystery in our worship.
We lose the wonder of the God who "reveals yet conceals; who invites yet hides; who rests yet never sleeps; who is the lion and the lamb; who thunders from heaven yet whispers to his children; who confounds yet confides." (Matt Redman, Facedown)
In their book 20th Century Theology, Roger Olson and Stanley Grenz say that “God is imminent in human experience as the transcendent mystery that cannot be comprehended in spite of its absolute nearness”. Or in English ... when we draw near to God, if all we find is a tame and cuddly God then we are not as near to him as we like to think!
God has made a way for us to have intimacy with him, as he intended. Where does this happen? In the holy of holies, made accessible only by the blood of Jesus shed once for all time.