{"id":6705,"date":"2020-09-07T21:18:15","date_gmt":"2020-09-07T11:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=6705"},"modified":"2020-09-14T17:51:02","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T07:51:02","slug":"unspeakable-beauty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/unspeakable-beauty\/","title":{"rendered":"Unspeakable Beauty"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Unspeakable Beauty<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By John<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Original post by Becoming Fully Alive blog site<\/a><\/em> (June 25, 2015)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Someone once asked St. Pachomius to tell them of a vision he saw so that they could learn from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He replied:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you see a humble man with a pure heart,\nthat would be greater than all the visions; because through that vision, you\nwould see the invisible God. Do not ask for a better vision.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If seeing just one godly man\ncan have such a profound impact on a person, then how glorious would it be to\nsee three godly men living in unbroken communion and mutually offering their\nlives to Him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading through 1 Samuel, I was\nawed to read about three such men reflecting the beauty of the Holy Trinity.\nThey are only mentioned in two verses, and to my knowledge they are not\nmentioned again in the Bible:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2026three men going up to God at Bethel will\nmeet you, one carrying three young goats, another carrying three loaves of\nbread, and another carrying a skin of wine. And they will greet you and give\nyou two loaves of bread, which you shall receive from their hands.\u201d 1\nSamuel 10:3-4<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who Are They?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first thing that is said\nabout these men is that they are \u201cgoing up to God at Bethel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What a beautiful verse!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How great would it be to be\ndescribed by nothing else but how focused you were on pursing God? These men\nwere not described by their relationships, their occupation, or even where they\ncame from (which was very traditional in those times) but they were simply\ndescribed by their pursuit of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bethel, which means house of\nGod, is significant because it was one of the first places where God met with\nHis chosen people. This is actually the same place Jacob dreamed of a\nladder reaching to heaven, having angels ascending and descending on it and\nhaving the Lord standing above it. (Genesis 28:12-13)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It almost sounds like these\nthree men are on their way to climb this ladder to \u2018go up to\u2019 God.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Living in Communion <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can imagine that these men\nheld one another accountable and encouraged each other in Him as they made this\njourney up to God together. They were not wise in their own eyes and knew the\npower of having a companion so as not to travel alone (Ecclesiastes 4:12<\/a>).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Truly did the Psalmist speak of\nmen such as these:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behold, how good and how pleasant it\nis or brothers to dwell together in unity! Psalm 133:1<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also seems as though these\nmen of faith had all things in common. Surely there was one goat and one\nloaf of bread for each of them rather than one man having three goats and\nanother having three loaves of bread to himself. Each brought what they had and\nmade up for what the other lacked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, they had one\nspirit as they did anything together; it was never one of them doing\nan action individually. The following phrase makes this clear: \u201cthey will\ngreet you and give you two loaves of bread.\u201d They didn\u2019t live in communion\nwith just themselves, but from their abundance they were able to provide for\nthe for needs of those they came into contact with. They only kept for\nthemselves what they needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thinking about how these men\nmight have greeted those in their path I can only think they were genuine,\nwarm, and heartfelt. They were the type of people to ask you how you were and\nwould actually care to hear your response. They were the type of men that\ndidn\u2019t just say \u201cGod bless you\u201d to people without actually being a source of\nblessing to them (as witnessed by their free gift of bread).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worshiping in Spirit and Truth<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These men were worshiping God\nthe way He intended them to worship Him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s likely that the goats they\nwere taking with them were intended to be sacrificed \u2013 one for each of them \u2013\nas a sin offering:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cor if his sin which he has committed comes to\nhis knowledge, he shall bring as his offering a kid of the goats, a male\nwithout blemish. And he shall lay his hand on the head of the goat, and kill it\nat the place where they kill the burnt offering before the Lord. It is a sin\noffering.\u201d (Leviticus 4:23-24)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were not only worshipping\nGod in their relationship with one another, with their giving of themselves\nphysically and emotionally to others, but they were also giving God\nglory by living a life of repentance<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These men remind me\nof Melchizedek in that they also prophetically brought bread and wine to\noffer to God as a prefigurement of the Eucharist. They also seem to be \u201cwithout\nfather, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor\nend of life\u201d (Hebrews 7:3) but worship God continually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What beautiful men!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are all called to be like\nour Lord, God, Saviour, and King, Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with that though, we are\ncalled to live in harmony and communion with one another and to be an icon of\nthe Holy Trinity. It was the unity that these men had that made them\nspecial. Their relationship with one another was a reflection of God\nHimself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These three men of\nfaith are a beautiful example of perichoresis, which is a term used\nto describe how the three Persons of the Trinity are One God. Perichoresis\nis the divine dance of Love where there is a complete and mutual\ngiving and receiving. It involves Persons in harmony having perfect\nconsideration for each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lord, give us to reflect Your\nunspeakable beauty!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(c) Becoming Fully Alive (2016) Original post – <\/a>https:\/\/becomingfullyalive.com\/unspeakable-beauty\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unspeakable Beauty By John Original post by Becoming Fully Alive blog site (June 25, 2015) Someone once asked St. Pachomius to tell them of a vision he saw so that they could learn from it. He replied: \u201cIf you see a humble man with a pure heart, that would be greater than all the visions; because through that … Continue reading “Unspeakable Beauty”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6706,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[266],"class_list":["post-6705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-beauty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6705"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6748,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6705\/revisions\/6748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}