Buechner: interesting

Wednesday, September 28, 2022
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”
    —Matthew 23:27-28 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If this is indeed all the power that God has—the power of an idea—then who in Hell is interested in him? In Hell—just there—who is interested in a God without power? Of course the answer is that everyone is: everyone is interested in a God without power, interested, and there is the end of it. In fact Hell might he described as the place or condition where men find God interesting and where this is all that they find; where they look at the Cross and are interested. And by this definition anyway, Hell is not altogether unfamiliar to any of us. How many preachers, for instance, make this their Sunday proclamation to the faithful: How interesting is God! How interesting to apply the idea of God to this and that, to the international situation, to family relations, or what have you. I shudder to think how often I have done it myself.
    ... Frederick Buechner (b. 1926), The Magnificent Defeat, Seabury Press, 1966, p. 31 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 23:27-28; 12:38-39; 23:23-24; Mark 8:11-12; 9:17-29; Luke 11:29; Acts 2:36-40
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, raise me from my sin of unbelief. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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