A simple sensory experience can instantly transport a person to another time and place. Every time I catch a whiff of cigar smoke, I’m back in the center-field bleachers of Memorial Stadium in Baltimore; a little kid with his dad. If I hear just a few notes of “Interstate Love Song” by Stone Temple Pilots, I’m riding shotgun with my college roommate as we bomb around Toccoa, Georgia doing our Meals on Wheels student ministry in his girlfriend’s Buick LeSabre. With every Tic Tac I taste, I’m sitting in a pew next to my Grandma staring out the tall windows of the Congregational Church in Benson, Vermont wondering what other treats might be hiding in that purse of hers. Our minds have an immense database of experiences. But searching that database for a particular memory, image, or bit of information can be very difficult and frustrating at times. We search and ponder; jogging our memories and all we often get are a few foggy reminiscences and some blurry pictures. But then, all of a sudden, we smell woodsmoke from a chimney or hear gravel under a car tire or hear an eagle scream and the memories that come flooding in are all crystal clear and in high definition.
I think of this phenomenon when it comes to understanding God and the realities of our life beyond nature. There’s so much about our existence that we want to grasp and understand. But try as we might to get a handle on it, all we get is a hint or a faint ringing of a bell. But this is what I love about Scripture! God has given to us, in His holy Word, pages and pages of laws and letters; histories, songs, poems, and prophecies that all serve as those sights, sounds, smells, and tastes that evoke for us realities that we wouldn’t be able to access otherwise. God is plugging heavenly truth and insight into the mainframe of our hearts and minds.
I love how Moses put it to his people in his final address to them as their leader: “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.” Instead of living in frustration and consternation over all you cannot make sense of, simply pick up the Bible today and read a little. See if what you read doesn’t transport you to the heights of heaven, to the depths of the earth, into the inner recesses of your being, and to the very throne room of your Father.
