We live in a city that always wants the latest, the most novel, the weirdest, the newest thing. The changes of the 21st century are more rapid than any in history. Micro-chips are tripling in power every year, our food is getting faster, our information intake is getting broader, our connectivity is expanding to every single facet of our lives. The start-up is sexy because it is new, it is exciting, it is novel. The latest phone is sexy because it is simply the latest. The next date is sexy because the person is unchartered territory– so much to explore, a new adventure every time. Yet, it leaves us spread thin – a superficial community longing for something beneath the surface. Because the novel can only be novel once. And then we quickly grow bored, looking for new terrain to open up.
The millennial generation opens up in surprisingly vulnerability because we want to grow deeper quicker not realising that depth is a product of time, a product of plodding not thrill. Depth cannot be dished up in a single order, depth involves not the novel but revisiting the old again and again and again. Seeing new angles, new lines, new vistas which were previously hidden. Depth is a gradual exposing through time like the weather-beaten cliff of cracks in our character, of beauty, of life.
It is birthed in the tide of every day washing up on the beach of our lives with a surprising sameness. Imperceptible. Interrupted by moments of joy, moments of darkness, moments of bewilderment and confusion. And it is this sharing of the mundane, encountering memories together – seeing reactions and responses that we hadn’t seen before – witnessing the wrinkles of time forming on the face of a loved one that drills depth into our souls.
And with our relationship with God it is no different. We desire God to show us something new, when often he may be wanting to show us something old. We feel we have learnt the gospel and want for a touching insight and novel fact, a glorious new vista, but God may be wanting to take us deeper into the gospel we have already known but lightly grasped.
Jesus, when he rose from the dead, didn’t suddenly teach his disciples a whole new topic. He taught them ‘the kingdom of God”. Yawn. “Jesus, we’ve just had 3 years on that. Could you teach us something else?” But Jesus knows what the disciples need.
For those 3 years, much of his teaching ministry was a slow revealing of himself shrouded in misunderstanding and confusion. “Now you are speaking clearly and not using figures of speech” they say in John 17 right before his death is about to occur. And yet they still have not seized his true meaning. The empty tomb stuns them, though Jesus has been repeating the same fact again and again and again. The kingdom of God was known and yet the depths not plumbed.
Much of what we need as long-standing believers isn’t the new and sexy and exciting. It’s the old gone deeper, drilled into our souls through experience – through the daily weathering of life – through witnessing again the glory of the cross, the majesty of who Jesus is once again. It’s not chasing after inspiring sermons with charismatic preachers and novel ideas. It’s taking communion and instead of secretly tuning out – meditating, thinking deeply on the wonder of the cross. It’s listening to a sermon and instead of listening for what interests me, it is asking questions – Father, what are you saying to me? How does this reveal more of who Jesus is? What should I repent of? How do I need to act in light of this?
It’s becoming diligent in not just seeking more information, but taking what we read, what we listen to and seeking to apply it more deeply than ever before. For this will create a deep community – over time – like the weathering of the cliffs – it will produce a beauty that is unparalleled.