I know.
Believe me, I know.
I wrote a post yesterday, and given my history over the last few months you should not be seeing a post on here until at least Saturday.
But it is Monday, the day after I wrote another blog entry, and I'm at it.
Class is starting after lunch today so that we can get some time to work on our group projects and my group isn't meeting for another two hours still, so I have time to reflect on some pretty incredibly imagery that I just came upon in my devotions this morning.
Maybe this is just me, but I have begun to notice a pattern with myself when reading non-fiction. I tend to love the first little chunk of a book and gather great insight from it, and then for almost the rest of it find myself struggling to get through it. Most times I can't even remember the point of the book, or the chapter I am working on. Such was the case with Chesterton's The Everlasting Man. When I started it over the summer I found quite a bit that struck me, but the last few months have seemed like trudging through the mud.
Something has begun to change over the last week. Perhaps it is because I am drawing near to the conclusion of the book, or perhaps I am just in a different place, I don't know. All I know is that I read some incredible descriptions of the death of Christ and felt like I just had to share it. I finished the chapter "The Strangest Story in the World," and Chesterton painted the crucifixion in a light that I had never seen it. He talks of how difficult, how impossible even, it is to add words to this part of the Gospel. So rather than simply adding words, here is what he says.
"It is more within my powers, and here more immediately to my purpose, to point out that in that scene [the crucifixion] were symbolically gathered all the human forces that have been vaguely sketched in this story. As kings and philosophers and the popular element had been symbolically present at his birth, so they were more practically concerned in his death; and with that we come face to face with the essential fact to be realized. All the great groups stood about the Cross represent in one way or another the great historical truth of the time: that the world could not save itself. Man could do no more... in the lightning flash of this incident, we see great Rome, the imperial republic, going downward under her Lucrectian doom. Skepticism has eaten away even the confident sanity of the conquerors of the world. He who is enthroned to say what is just can only ask: 'What is truth?' So in that drama which decided the whole fate of antiquity, one of the central figures is fixed in what seems the reverse of his true role. Rome was almost another name for responsibility. Yet he stands forever as a sort of rocking statue of the irresponsible. Man could do no more. Even the practical had become the impracticable. Standing between the pillars of his own judgment seat, a Roman had washed his hands of the world."
Man could do no more.
In the last two paragraphs of this chapter Chesterton drives this point home even more so.
"For in that second cavern [Christ's tomb] the whole of that great and glorious humanity which we call antiquity was gathered up and covered over; and in that place it was buried. It was the end of a very great thing called human history--the history that was merely human. The mythologies and the philosophies were buried there, the gods and the heroes and the sages. In the great Roman phrase, they had lived. But as they could only live, so they could only die; and they were dead.
"On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn."
I got shivers just typing that (and not just because I am freezing right now).
I don't think I have ever looked at the crucifixion of Christ in this light. Chesterton has spent his book talking about the ways people have searched for truth and tried to make sense of their world. And then he shows how in the coming of Christ this one great truth was revealed: no matter how hard man tries, he cannot save himself.
Man could do no more.
Like Chesterton, I really don't think I could add any more to this. My words would be pointless. So I leave this to your thoughts and reflections.
Believe me, I know.
I wrote a post yesterday, and given my history over the last few months you should not be seeing a post on here until at least Saturday.
But it is Monday, the day after I wrote another blog entry, and I'm at it.
Class is starting after lunch today so that we can get some time to work on our group projects and my group isn't meeting for another two hours still, so I have time to reflect on some pretty incredibly imagery that I just came upon in my devotions this morning.
Maybe this is just me, but I have begun to notice a pattern with myself when reading non-fiction. I tend to love the first little chunk of a book and gather great insight from it, and then for almost the rest of it find myself struggling to get through it. Most times I can't even remember the point of the book, or the chapter I am working on. Such was the case with Chesterton's The Everlasting Man. When I started it over the summer I found quite a bit that struck me, but the last few months have seemed like trudging through the mud.
Something has begun to change over the last week. Perhaps it is because I am drawing near to the conclusion of the book, or perhaps I am just in a different place, I don't know. All I know is that I read some incredible descriptions of the death of Christ and felt like I just had to share it. I finished the chapter "The Strangest Story in the World," and Chesterton painted the crucifixion in a light that I had never seen it. He talks of how difficult, how impossible even, it is to add words to this part of the Gospel. So rather than simply adding words, here is what he says.
"It is more within my powers, and here more immediately to my purpose, to point out that in that scene [the crucifixion] were symbolically gathered all the human forces that have been vaguely sketched in this story. As kings and philosophers and the popular element had been symbolically present at his birth, so they were more practically concerned in his death; and with that we come face to face with the essential fact to be realized. All the great groups stood about the Cross represent in one way or another the great historical truth of the time: that the world could not save itself. Man could do no more... in the lightning flash of this incident, we see great Rome, the imperial republic, going downward under her Lucrectian doom. Skepticism has eaten away even the confident sanity of the conquerors of the world. He who is enthroned to say what is just can only ask: 'What is truth?' So in that drama which decided the whole fate of antiquity, one of the central figures is fixed in what seems the reverse of his true role. Rome was almost another name for responsibility. Yet he stands forever as a sort of rocking statue of the irresponsible. Man could do no more. Even the practical had become the impracticable. Standing between the pillars of his own judgment seat, a Roman had washed his hands of the world."
Man could do no more.
In the last two paragraphs of this chapter Chesterton drives this point home even more so.
"For in that second cavern [Christ's tomb] the whole of that great and glorious humanity which we call antiquity was gathered up and covered over; and in that place it was buried. It was the end of a very great thing called human history--the history that was merely human. The mythologies and the philosophies were buried there, the gods and the heroes and the sages. In the great Roman phrase, they had lived. But as they could only live, so they could only die; and they were dead.
"On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn."
I got shivers just typing that (and not just because I am freezing right now).
I don't think I have ever looked at the crucifixion of Christ in this light. Chesterton has spent his book talking about the ways people have searched for truth and tried to make sense of their world. And then he shows how in the coming of Christ this one great truth was revealed: no matter how hard man tries, he cannot save himself.
Man could do no more.
Like Chesterton, I really don't think I could add any more to this. My words would be pointless. So I leave this to your thoughts and reflections.
WOW. I got shivers after reading that last part too! I never looked at the crucifixition in light of how Chesterton so poignantly describes..."man could no more" as seen in light of the Romans and all they stood for- they/ a type and shadow of us all in our human state - had conquered the world over but at the end of it, still could not fathom what truth was. The meaning behind it all. Wow...I love the parallel of Jesus in the Garden!!! in the cool of the evening and in the dawning of a new day! Awesome :) Thanks for encoraging me on my lunch break today :)
ReplyDeleteI am so glad someone else was able to take such encouragement from it! I know reading it this morning felt was incredible... I felt as if I was breathing in the cool air of that new day!
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