I was reading a book I don’t like until Tuesday, when I closed it for the very last time. I’ll drop it off at one of the used thrift shops in town this weekend. This was the 2nd time through. I didn’t like it the first time, but the author is one I very much enjoy, I own several books of his that I would happily recommend, so it sat on my shelf asking for a second chance.

It was even worse this time, but even in that, there is something important to learn. Reducing a whole to simply one of it’s parts is dangerous. Reducing a person to one of his quirks, one of his habits, one of his days, one of his mistakes, is wildly disrespectful to that person and the One who created him.

The best part of this book was a quote by another. C.S. Lewis wrote, “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us.” This quote deserves it’s own post, series, year of sermons and small groups to unpack, but not today.

In 1 Corinthians 3: 21-23, Paul writes, “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.” I think what Paul is saying is that we sometimes spend our time arguing over what or who or where we can find God, when God is everywhere, if we just have eyes to see and ears to hear.

We can find beauty and truth in a child, a movie, the mall, a greeting card, a sunrise, or a book we don’t like. And wherever we find beauty and truth, we find Jesus, and it is our business to point it, to point Him, out. Later in the Scriptures, Paul quotes a poet from Crete to Titus. Cretan poets are not Christians, their poetry not “Christian” art, but Paul is wide awake and quick to claim truth wherever and whenever he sees it.

I think that quote illustrates this theme nicely. We are half-hearted, looking for God in churches and temples and the Christian section of the bookstore, when infinite wisdom and joy and truth and presence is offered us. Isn’t it the same story, we try over and over to compress the story of God into one that we can easily understand? This compression didn’t serve Moses, Jonah, Ezekiel, and on and on and on very well then and it doesn’t serve us well now.

I know I’ve said this before, but maybe spirituality is an art of subtraction. We get rid of the things that no longer serve us, we cast off the weight that holds us back, we break the blinders that keep us from seeing God as He is instead of as we are. It’s uncomfortable, sure, but growth always is. We grow by subtracting and find, strangely, that we’ve gained all things in the process.