I like to keep up with my buddy, Steve Knight, and his great blog, Missional Shift.
He wrote last week about God and a way he understands who God is:
It’s already been said many times in the missional church conversation that God is a missional God, that there is something in the very nature of God’s being that is missional, which is evidenced in Scripture by God sending Jesus Christ and God and Christ sending the Holy Spirit. And in the same way, we are sent … to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world today.
This isn’t a new topic for me. I happen to agree with this understanding of God’s actions in the world. In particular, the word “sending” has a lot of resonance for me. We close the Table worship gathering with a sending of one another for this very reason – I don’t think God wants us to keep this good news and hospitality to ourselves. In fact, the divine is already out the door, working in the lives of people we may never meet.
One of the worst things we can do in our growth as Christians is to figure out God. The more we look, seek, and seek to understand, the more God will be dynamic, empowering, and boundary-shattering. Throughout history, whenever a barrier has gone up, God has sent spirit-filled people to skirt its edges or cross it completely. Revisit the stories of the early black churches, monastic women leaders, Celtic Christianity, and the Desert Fathers and Mothers. God moves in mysterious ways, indeed.
God’s participatory nature means that even a follower who has endured for many years to know and understand the divine will still be surprised.
And that’s cool.
