Appointment

“We do not know what God is.
God does not know what God is because God is not any created thing.
Literally God is not, because God transcends being.”

- "John Scotus Erigena (815 – 877) was an Irish theologian, neoplatonist philosopher, and poet. He wrote a number of works, but is best known today for having written The Division of Nature, which has been called the final achievement of ancient philosophy, a work which "synthesizes the philosophical accomplishments of fifteen centuries."

Eriugena argued on behalf of something like a pantheistic definition of nature. He translated and made commentaries upon the work of Pseudo-Dionysius, and was one of the few European philosophers of his day that knew Greek, having studied in Athens. Famously, he is said to have been stabbed to death by his students at Malmesbury with their pens.

This anecdote illustrates both the character of John Scotus Eriugena and the position he occupied at the French court:
The king asked, 'What separates a sot [drunkard] from an Irishman?'
Eriugena replied, 'Only a Table.'"
~ Wikipedia

"When he says, “God is not anything,” and, “God is not,” Erigena doesn’t mean that there is no God. Instead, he means that God cannot be said to exist in the way that other things exist. He’s using negative language to emphasize that God is something “other.”

This way of thinking is a struggle for those of us in living here in the west, because we pride ourselves (especially those of us who are Evangelical) in knowing who and what God is, and how to explain God in simple terms so that our friends and neighbors can understand what we believe...

I think back over my own life, look at where I am today, and I can’t draw any sort of line between the various stages of chaos and disorder that have caused me to arrive where I did. I never planned to be where I am. In fact, growing up in a pastor’s home, becoming a pastor was the one thing in my life that I said I would never do. Yet, now that I am, I realize that there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing with my life.

Had I gotten everything that I wanted when I wanted it and how I wanted it, I’d be something else. Life is strange like that...

In 1934 John O’Hara published his first novel, titled, “An Appointment In Samarra.” The book title is borrowed from on an old Mesopotamian tale about a merchant’s servant who is trying to avoid Death, a character in the story. The tale goes like this:

A merchant in Baghdad sent his servant down to the marketplace for provisions. Soon afterward, the servant came home, white as a ghost and trembling. He told the merchant that he saw Death in the marketplace and that she made a threatening gesture toward him.

Borrowing the merchant’s horse, the servant fled at great speed to Samarra (a city about 75 miles away) where he knew Death would never find him.

The merchant, intrigued by the story of his servant went down to the marketplace to question Death about why she made the threatening gesture toward his servant. Death replied, “That was not a threatening gesture that I made. On the contrary, I was startled to see him in Baghdad, for I knew that I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

We all have all have appointments with things that we are trying to avoid. And the harder that we try to avoid them, we put ourselves right in their path.

What are you avoiding in your life today? What are you terrified of?
Instead of running from it, maybe you need to run toward it, embrace it, and learn from it. Selah."
~ Ryan Phipps, Senior Minister, Church In Bethesda