Boil to Rags, Part 1: Ultimate Reality (a devotional series by an orthodox rebel)

"Christianity, even watered down, is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags." -G.K. Chesterton

"For God...." John 3:16

Here is the grand assumption, the presupposition supreme. Here is the first cause and mystery, reality resplendent at the back of all appearances. A fountain of ever-flowing Fact and ever-vibrant Life, a Life strong and taut like a bow string set for firing shafts of splendor into the outer dark, or set for playing symphonic sights and sounds that break against all weeping and gnashing like infinite waves against a dead shore. Nothing is barren in that Almighty core, a holy seed ever-germinating newer life, newer still with every harvest. All things new with every reaping. There is no stopping this Life, this Three-Person Life. He is the only power remaining, the only that ever was. All others are derivative from Him and dependent on Him. All strength is weakness beside Him, all truth lies, all beauty corruption, all goodness filthy rags. He is the paragon par excellence, and without Him all is No-thing.

He speaks his Word against our lies, against our raging, simplistic notions, against our mania for fads and fashions and all things temporal and fading away. He is the rock smashing our feet of clay, the immovable mountain which no man can ascend. He breathes His Beauty across our ashes, stirring dead, dull things to life more abundant and free, inspiring despair to come out of its self-inflicted desolation, and bringing us to the threshold and consummation of all desire and pain. He is the fire that consumes our filthy rags into glory unimagined. He lives His Goodness amongst our diseases, our diseased minds and hearts. Our diseased souls that want no good and find no rest. We all are cripples before His ecstasy, and His dance sends we lame leaping. He is the unhidden origin of all our health and happiness and being. He is Being sui generis, and outside or beyond Him there is No-thing.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012