I: I AM

I am not big on “why?” questions. I choose to live my life in the “is” zone. Other people spend enormous amounts of energy and angst asking why something did or didn’t happen. I accept things as is and move on. The positive to that is that I don’t tend to get stuck. The down side is that I sometimes appear shallow and naïve.

Here’s a why question for you: why do we have to dissect everything? Why do we have to take things apart and find out what makes them tick? The clock works, leave it alone. Okay, maybe that’s a really bad analogy, and I really do understand that we need to understand how things work so we can fix them and improve them. I’m just not one of the people that God invested that inquisitive mind in. Picture me at the burning bush instead of Moses. I wouldn’t have had near the number of excuses and when God told me what to tell them was his name, I would have agreed and headed to Pharaoh.

Do you remember the scene? You can find it in Exodus 3 and 4. Moses sees a bush on fire, but not being consumed and the text seems to insinuate that he sort of meanders over to check it out. It’s not until the Bush starts giving Moses instructions that he starts balking. He has excuses and needs reassurance, a name and a sign. In the end he even suggests that God has the wrong guy. Surely, he wanted to be talking to his brother…or anybody other than himself.

The name that God gave Moses has been the focus of countless language scholars and theologians. It’s almost as if by understanding the name, we could understand God. I think it’s interesting that God told Moses that his name was “I Am” and the rest of the scriptures seems to be about explaining what that means. There are seven references by Jesus in the New Testament, I am: bread of life, good shepherd, light of the world, living water, way truth and life, the resurrection and the life, and finally claiming to be before Abraham (before Abraham, I AM). Trouble seems to be that even with all the explanation, we still don’t get it.

One of my favorite quotes has been attributed to Kierkegaard, Niebuhr, Osho, Henry Miller, and Joseph Campbell: life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved. And in that same vein, I believe that: God is a mystery to be loved, not an entity to be dissected. Karl Barth, the highly respected Swiss theologian, who wrote countless theological volumes, when asked to sum up his life work into one sentence replied: Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. That’s pretty clear. Understandable enough for a child. Clear enough for a hurting world. Just tell them I AM.

So before you race out the door and into your day, will you take a moment to reflect on how you will live so that they will know he is?