iThink...thereFore, iAm

I’m going to start a series in which i will (attempt) to dig deeper into some of the words or jargon we commonly use in worship or in church, and delve into the deeper meaning of it, as much as i can. More often than not this will be something that strikes me as most of us not really going deep enough into what we say and just repeating it as it comes.  I think some of these things have implications into the way we live life and so on, and i’d like to point them out, as much as they will be my opinions and perspectives and people are free to disagree with them. :) I’ll try to come up with something like this ever so often, perhaps once a week, but sooner or later i’m going to run out of ideas so if anyone has any input or something you’d like to hear a take on i’d be more than glad to give it a shot.

And so the first victim is going to be the phrase “alpha and omega”. haha.

We often say this of God, that He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end. We know that God started before the beginning of time, and He will last till beyond eternity - it is even accurately said that He was before time began and He will be the one to will time to end. But i somehow think there is a deeper meaning to this that simply the symbolism of the Greek alphabet.

“Alpha” and “Omega” are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet - symbolic of the eternal nature of God. The direct reference can be found in Revelations 1:8, 21:6 and 22:13. The reiteration of “the first and last”, “the beginning and end”, and He who “was and is and is to come” implies that God existed before everything and will continue to exist after all has come to an end - the Uncreated Creator, as John White phrased it, who existed before creation (and had a part to play in it) and will continue to exist after all that is created has come to pass.

Perhaps most of us understand this part - that God is eternal. What we maybe never thought about is what that implies to us, which kind of only struck me today. OK maybe i’m slow and you guys have all figured this out long before i did. But i’m going to put this here anyway.

Consider this: if you knew something or someone would last way beyond you, would you invest more or less time/effort in it? If something has such value that it was eternal, or that it was eternal and therefore had that kind of intrinsic value, how would you react to it? This is something i was led to think about as i considered the concept of “Alpha and Omega”. It occurred that He is not just the Alpha and Omega, He wants to be my Alpha and Omega.

I am reminded of my solitary general purpose - “the chief purpose of Man is to worship God” - and everything that i do stems from that. It will start with Him, it will end when He bids my life to end, and everything in between needs to stem from that focus. Can i have other things other than worship in song in church? Can i do things outside church? I think by all means - worship is not limited in our outward expression, and in fact the most important form of worship (i feel) occurs inside us. It is easy (or at least easier) to follow a set of rules and methods and procedures to help us go through the motions and carry out the necessary actions - but all that achieves, whether we intend it that way or not, is that it forms a set of habits and actions that portray that you seem to have that perspective in life.

I realize i’m treading on thin ice here - so let me clarify that i fully believe that we are to live out our faith and the outward expression is good and very much encouraged! I don’t think we can claim to love God and put Him first and yet not have it show in our lives - what i’m saying here is that it is possible to package things nicely to make it look like we have that perspective.  It’s also possible to fool everyone around us doing so. At this point i have this inkling that in such a facade there will be holes that can be detected if looked at and if we are honest enough with ourselves - some of them others will see, some only we see and we can choose to hide it (which i have often done) or deal with it (which i am forced to do more and more frequently). How do i know about the facade and about how we react to it? Simple: i did that for a time, until i started taking these things seriously.

That being said i feel that the outward expression comes from a natural inflow of what’s in the heart - i think it’s impossible to be perfect and we all fall from time to time, even with an eternal perspective, but it’s also hard to maintain a full faultless facade from all angles; there are bound to be some spots noticed. Very often one can tell when the heart of the person is pure or if they are just trying to keep things looking good. It becomes more evident when the trouble starts coming in - whether the Alpha and Omega is really the be all and end all of the person’s life becomes evident.

I don’t deny that even with this as the focus there are still lingering bits of things that we want to do with our lives here, and i’m trying to understand and reconcile the two together (hopefully) soon. I still wonder what it means.

Is He really your α and Ω? Is He mine?