don’t overthink it
On a rainy morning, the drops like sheets, the thickness of clouds casting shadow over waking, Kevin and I wander from our room in search of coffee. Riley pauses at the top of the stairs to greet us, bright-voiced, sunshine breaking.
“How are you feeling?” Kevin asks, but seeing her puzzled, wobbly expression, quickly amends, “How does your sunburn feel?”
On the Monday after resurrection Sunday, we look all shades of pink and brown.
Artists paint pictures of the empty tomb, rendering it full of light, throwing out beams like lasers that will cut you. You’d have to be visibly changed, seeing that place, especially on the day of the resurrection, when the disciples ran to see, their feet beating the ground, their clothes flapping. I say especially that day, but really, we haven’t stopped being transformed by the view.
Riley interprets Kevin’s question literally, silently reaching up to touch her cheekbones with her fingers.
Paul wrote that all who contemplate the glory of Christ are continually being transformed to be like Christ, with more and more glory. In scripture, the idea pervades; to look on God means to be changed by Him.
“Good, my sunburn feels good,” Riley says.
We worshipped in an amphitheater on Easter Sunday, celebrating the resurrection of Christ with nearly sixteen thousand people, our sprawling family, and some who would be adopted that very day. From where we stood, the stage even looked like a cave, split in half. Sixteen thousand represents only a microscopic drop in a heavenly teacup. We danced on a hill; we sang until our voices cracked. Riley came away with a sunburn.
The Latin word templum, composed of time (temp) and light (lum), later gave birth to many other words, including our English contemplate, which means to look at something thoughtfully for a long time. From the same root, templum, which actually in Latin refers to a place of observation, also came our word temple. On Easter Sunday, the amphitheater became a templum, and as we looked upon the resurrection, worship could be our only response.
Generally, in modern times and in our Western culture, humans have reduced contemplation to a series of thoughts, as though with our scholarship or empiricism we could ever come to fully understand God. “Who is God?” We ask, and then we start thinking. We crack open tomes of ideas and study them; we conduct our experiments. We reach up and tap our cheekbones with our fingers. God knew this about us, of course, and with compassion, He offered us quite a lot of evidence for the resurrection.
When Paul wrote about contemplating the glory of Christ in his second letter to the Corinthian church, Paul actually used an ancient Greek word that means to look at something in a mirror. From this, we understand our thoughtfulness as reflection. Light must be bent so that we can see. Paul meant to convey, as the Old Testament writers did, that human beings simply can’t look at God directly, and as a result, we also can’t see God clearly, at least not while clothed in mortality.
Our discovery of God may well be the ultimate appreciation of a “magic eye” picture, and for this, our word contemplate fits, particularly because in actual meaning, it carries the idea that we will look and consider for a long time.
I stare at those “magic eye” pictures with friends and they say, “Blur your focus and look through the picture,” and the minutes multiply while I stand trying to see.
I consider it good news that Paul includes in his writing no prerequisite clarity of sight for our transformation. As I gaze upon the glory of God, even as from a mirror, Paul says, I am being changed to be like Christ. It’s enough for me to show up and look.
“So, it doesn’t hurt,” Kevin says to Riley, smiling. Her sideways answer from a sideways view creates no barrier to their relationship. “I’m glad.”
“No, it doesn’t hurt, Dad,” she says, finally absorbing the love behind his question and the importance of it, her fingers still lightly pressing, leaving soft white prints in her cheeks.
As we amble downstairs, Riley pads on to the bathroom, where she had been headed before she stopped to greet us. Briefly, she searches her own reflection in the mirror. I know, because I can hear her mumbling, “No, my sunburn doesn’t hurt,” as if the view of it somehow affirms her finger-probe assessment. Again I smile, seeing in her contemplation a reflection of my own, as I search for ineffable facts within the boundaries of my mind.
