December 21, 2014: From Words to Experience – Michael Hidalgo

We live in a world of words. From texts to tweets to emails to signs to conversations. And yet in this milieu of words we suffer from a lack of meaning. Isn’t this interesting? It seems that all the words in the world are not enough. It’s why someone can tell you they love you, and when we experience the way we are treated we know it’s not true.

Words will never do what one really good experience will do. We can learn about poverty through books and stats and research … but when you are in a slum holding a dying child you learn so much more about poverty than a book could ever teach you.

What we really long for as humans are real and true experiences. We have been fooled into thinking words are the best way to communicate something – which is why we move from words to experience. But God, in the person of Jesus moved the other way. “The word became flesh …” Why? Because God could never explain himself to us with words, so he came to us to and shared in our experience so we could understand him.