for the wildness

There's a wildness to my God.  This wildness defies characterizations or organization or categorization.  This wildness blindsides me again and again the moment I think I have finally managed to tame my God.

I walked out into the inky blackness, desperate for answers.  I begged God for the key to unlocking the big questions I had.  Hell, salvation, women in the Church, the nature of grace... I wanted to know on which side of the line to land.  The inky blackness enveloped me.  I studied and prayed and discussed and emerged with no more peace than when I first embarked on this quest.

There's a wildness to my God.  He doesn't fit in my boxes, he breaks through all the fences - he's way too big for them in the first place.  He shatters my preconceptions, His Word constantly realigns my thoughts, gives me new questions.

There was a time when the Bible held all of the answers for me, when it brought peace and clarity.  I've changed; now the Bible jars me with its begged questions, with its insistence on shattering my equilibrium.  Who is God, anyway?

There is a wildness to my God.  I believe in His consistency as I do nothing but change.  It is his consistency that makes him wild.  Wholly other.  Essentially and entirely and utterly wild.

There was a time when I knew God.  I don't anymore.  Not really.  There are things I believe about God, yes.  Truths to which I cling.  I don't claim any special corner on knowledge of God, though.  He's too wild.  In spite of this, I love Him.  This Being, wholly Other, holds me.  That is wild, ridiculously wild.