stuttering

for a long time, i think humans have been fruitlessly attempting to put God into words. there is no ONE word that really sums Him all up: his jealous love, his tender mercy, his relentless chasing-- not a single word can put it all together. ever since i got serious about God, i used to want to try to simplify him to words. i wanted to be able to talk people into loving Jesus-- to show them what attracted me, to make them understand. i wanted desperately for other people to have what i have, to know the love that holds me up. in the same way, i try to live off the words others tell me about God when i have walked away from him and can't find my way back. i love to try to leave a trail of bread crumbs back to God while i'm walking away, but one thing i've discovered is that we never take the same way back. if we did, we'd be stuck in neutral our entire lives. i'm glad i've finally come to this conclusion, this knowledge that each new unknown path takes me deeper into the wilderness of a deep, passionate God.
i finally realized this in a simple situation i've been repeating almost every single week for years-- wednesday night church. the process generally follows this script: a couple songs of worship, someone comes up to speak shortly to introduce the sermon, another song, prayer, another song or two, sermon. well it was when Danny got up onstage to introduce the lesson or prayertime that it hit me. it was a week or two after i'd finally FINALLY taken a new path back to God. i was feeling more at peace than i ever had, like a weight was lifted from my shoulders. i loved God, i loved who i was, and i loved everything about all of it. there aren't words to explain it properly. danny got up to introduce the lesson, and he was describing God's infinite love for us in words that i'd heard many times before. but this time they came alive. they were words that meant something to me now. i realized that the human language has no words that satisfactorily support the weight of His love, but if i were to try to put how i was feeling about God into words, it would be exactly what danny was saying. i remember nodding my head with watery eyes, contentment in every word i heard. it all resounded with exactly how i felt about God, and about how he feels about us. i'd heard the words before, but this time they meant something. i had been trying to make them mean something for a long time, but i couldn't force them to mean this much before. i had thought they sounded so trite before when i was far from God, like a rehearsed speech. but i now realized that trying to describe God is more like...stuttering. like you keep trying to make it come out different because you don't really mean it to come out exactly the way it comes out. you want it to sound better. better formed. something more pleasing to hear. but every time you stop and try to start over to make it sound different, no matter how many times you try to repeat it, it keeps coming out the same. in that moment when i was so in tune with God i felt like i could feel his heartbeat, i began to realize something even bigger-- words just aren't ever going to be enough. never. i think about all the words that describe what God is to me: my shelter, my best friend, my peace, my joy, my very heart and soul-- and to anyone outside the Christian faith or really anyone outside my mind (which is everyone but me), those words probably sound trite and unfounded and probably mean something different to them from what they do to me. when i saw this, something greater clicked. i understood why human words couldn't call someone out of darkness or why when i talk about God, i get frustrated because my words feel so empty. because people don't respond to God's love with out words, they respond to Him-- his touch, his love, the beauty and wonder that surrounds His very being. it's when we begin to feel it and respond that we see that our stuttering out miniscule praises just doesn't go as far as we want. it's like the words are on the tip of your tongue, and they always stay there. because they're supposed to. because the movement of a heart belongs to God, not to the simple-minded stutterings of his 17-year-old daughter who's barely got a grasp on who He is.