the flowing

Last night was a night of many words and many silences. I played games with some people and we had a long discussion during scattergories in which I could not accept that "flowing" was a noun beginning with "f" which fulfilled the item "thing found at a beach". Partly because it is not a noun. It was argued with great zeal that "flowing" could be used as a gerund. But how. "The flowing is beautiful." It still sounds like an adjective, doesn't it? The "flowing" what? I still do not understand the perspective of the gerund hypothesis. But don't we all have plenty of things that we say which we want to be accepted which do not quite fit. This is probably the story of my life.

I think I am becoming more of a grammatical scholar through taking an "Arcing & Diagramming" course at my church. To those of you who go to my church, this sounds scintillating and lively and invigorating. To those of you who may not go to my church, this might sound boring, bookish, calculating and dull. O Contraire. It has been the most transformational and redemptive course. As I unpack the propositions and phrases of Scripture, and look at syntax and find out what phrase is modifying what, my eyes are changing. Yesterday, I was looking at a verse and I found the pivotal prepositional phrase, saw what it was modifying, and my heart was edified to the point of song, when I discovered Christ afresh at the heart of the word of God. I have also realized that without presenting the "ground" of the passage, the "command" means less. "Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful (Hebrews 10:23)." What good is it to tell people to hold unswervingly to a hope when you do not tell them what the hope is, or the "Ground" that God is faithful (therefore we may hope!)? I think the church in our day can be quick to go straight to the command as the main point when looking at a passage without understanding what ground is underneath.

Likewise, it is also easy to hear what someone has said at face value, without hearing and pursuing the heart that is underneath it. Lord, give me a heart that pursues both truth in the author's meaning and also the heart of my fellow man... Don't let me skip to the wrong conclusions about what is the main thing, or be flowing through life so fast that I do not hear Your voice, the voice of the great Author, with purposeful and faithful intentions.