Words

I've struggled to express myself with words all my life. I often feel like I don't have the words to describe what I'm seeing or what I'm feeling. Trying to convey the message to someone else, it frustrates me. One of my friends said wisely, "A picture is like a thousand words. Trying to describe a picture with words is like trying to color a large box with a thin pen." Indeed.

I now understand why during worship, I don't usually sing in words. I cry out in wordless sounds, but deep inside I feel like God knows exactly what I'm trying to say. It unlimits me from the need to find the right words, bypassing my mind, allowing my spirit to interact with Him directly.

Before the Tower of Babel, all of the world's people spoke in one language and they understood each other perfectly. But after Babel, they started to babble as their language got confused. When Jesus died on the cross, this curse was reversed. Indeed, when the Holy Spirit came, the people spoke in tongues. I believe this was what language was truly like before Babel. It was a spiritual language, where words did not just have logical content, but had emotional and spiritual content as well.

I feel like God is trying to teach me to speak a new way. "Use words to describe what you want to say, but not to define what you want to say." My words are no longer to be taken at face value. They are only portals to the larger picture that I hold inside of me. Anyone who wants to know me will recognize this portal and receive the invitation to enter in. I feel that this is the same with God and His words. He often gives us such a small snippet, but it opens up a whole new world, if we choose to enter in.

Words have depth. Some words are so deep they draw us straight to the depths of the intimacies and the vulnerabilities of His heart. To truly know someone else, we don't need them to tell us exactly what is going on inside of them. They only need to give us a tiny snippet of it, and with that invitation, we can enter in entirely.