My God

"My God full of mercy
Heard our weeping
Came to bring us home again
My God takes the broken
And makes them whole

My God mocked and beaten
Crushed and bleeding
Yet crying Father forgive
My God became broken
To make me whole

My God on the third day
In the morning
Broke the shackles of the grave
My God takes the broken
And makes them whole

My God knows my failures
Speaks forgiveness
Gives me strength to try again
My God takes the broken
And makes me whole."
(Stuart Townend)

Sigh. What a God we have.
Language has been doing my head in again, it's all too easy to skim over the words, think I know what they mean and forget the brilliant concept, idea, person or truth that they are communicating to me.

An example: I asked a friend on Friday what cool thing about God he'd been reminded of recently. He replied quoting Galatians 3 that the Gospel is blessing for all nations. A good thing. But my brain does something irritating.

I read a sentence like that and shudder inwardly because I forget the reality it is describing and just read the words. The words float over my brain and all I hear is seemingly jargon. Just words devoid of the concept they were describing. It's a problem with words becoming overfamilar and getting separated from the brilliant truth they were describing, so I stopped and thought about it for a moment.

Then it hit me, the Gospel being blessing for all nations means the reality of God coming to rescue his people is something that brings good things to the whole world. Get into that in more detail and suddenly you can see why my friend was excited. And I became excited.

Phew. But it's a battle. And it's one that is worth fighting, especially if you've been in this crazy Christian thing for a long time. It's all too easy to lose the reality behind the words and get cynical at the overuse of jargon and phrases which are attached to the myriad of Christian subcultures. The problem is then that it's all too easy to get cynical with God. I'm happy to be cynical at stupid subcultures. I hate it when that leads me to get cynical about the reality of the living and true God.

I'm not sure where this thought is going, other than I like it when I remember the reality behind the language and I like it when I enjoy God and can tell Him that without it sounding empty and hollow. I'm most scared when I just talk a good talk and nothing is going on inside. I guess this is just a plea for being real with God and each other, and using different language as much as possible to jolt each other back into the depths of what this life is all about.