The Great, Glorious S'.
Learning French has, in some sense, turned me back into a child. I moved to France in August, entirely unsure of how to say anything in the French language besides please, thank you, and my order at a café. My knowledge of the language seemed to increase exponentially over the next four months. My brain was always making room for new verb tenses and Southern French colloquialisms. Like a little kid, I was slowly learning how to express myself, how to put my thoughts out loud. And in the process, I was falling in love with the French language, romanced by this collection of gorgeous ways to say things.
There is a group of verbs called “reflexives” which exist in the French language—reflexive in the sense that the self is implicated in the words’ meanings. The self is doing something to, by, and for itself. For example, s’assoir is the infinitive form of the French word for “sitting down.” That S’ in front indicates it’s reflexive: Like se lever (“to wake oneself up”) and se sentir (“to make oneself feel”), s’assoir puts the self on both the giving and receiving ends of action; in the same way that I wake myself up and feel my own feelings, I sit myself down.
I bring up this Frenchlinguistic convention only because I think it reveals something significantabout how humans see agency and action, another example of made things(languages) reflecting their makers (us, the human race). We deceive ourselvesinto thinking that life happens in the reflexive form, a realm in which thingshappen to us, by us, for us. We’ve folded that notion into the very words wespeak and how we say them—what falls out of our mouths always seems so tellingof what’s churning inside our minds, doesn’t it?
Every corner of our culturereinforces this idea, too, nurturing the undying human impulse to put the selfat the center. Granted, the line of vision to which Christians are called takesmore faith, more certainty that what we cannot see is really happening rightbefore our eyes. To live like God is the great S’ standing in front of all our days, both giving and receivingour action, is a marvelously difficult discipline. But I’d venture to say it’s anindispensible and critical one, too. And how radically would our faith bemagnified and our fears decreased if we saw God for who He is?
Paul writes this in Romans 11: “Oh, the depthof the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable Hisjudgments, and His paths beyond tracing out! ‘Who has known the mind of theLord? Or who has been His counselor?’ ‘Who has ever given to God, that Godshould repay them?’ For from Him and through Him and for Him are all things.”Seeing God as the source, the enabler, and the end of all our means is the mostchallenging and the most truthful way to see this world. And it would beinfinitely worth our while to spend the rest of our days trying, failing, andtrying again to garner that kind of seeing.
God is the agent of ourday-to-day, waking us up, making us feel, and sitting us down. Do we allowourselves to see that? He is, whether we allow Him to be or not, our GreatInitiator—the Waker, Maker, and Arrester of our souls. And something holy andintimate happens when we consciously concede to that truth.
God, in His supreme andsolemn all-knowingness, tells me about His character most loudly and lovinglythrough images. This summer, He fixed to the forefront of my mind an image of atable, a chair, and a child. I wrote this about it: “Heaven is the fullness ofbelonging. And discovering the seat Jesus has saved for me at His Heavenlytable, learning how to simply sit there (rather than cower behind it inself-loathing or stand boastfully on its seat)—these lessons have marked my story…”
You and I, wide-eyed restlesschildren, each have a seat at Jesus’s Heavenly table. We come home there,though we can do nothing to merit that homecoming. Desperately, He wants toteach us how to sit, how to stay still there, and how to belong. For thoselessons to sink in, we must go through a kind of re-envisioning process whichtrains our eyes to see God for who He is: our greatest Giver and most worthyReceiver; wise, all-knowing, unsearchable, and never-needing; the great,glorious S’ standing in front of allour days.
“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” Let’s fall into that depth.
words by Delaney Young and photo by Arianna Taralson