Blue Jays, or, What We Must Never Mistake

It started as a Wikipedia search (doesn’t it always?) after I had bought some new birdseed and refilled my feeders. I was doing a little research on goldfinches which led to looking up interesting facts about several common backyard birds. I looked at the House Finch, the Starling, and the Blue Jay. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen any Blue Jays in my yard in a while. They seem to come out of the woodwork the second I put a peanut outside but since I hadn’t put any out in a while, they too, were noticeably absent. In addition, my neighborhood lacks the tall oak trees that the birds adore.

Later in the day I was trying to decide where to go for a walk. I try to find time to unwind every weekend (so that I don’t go crazy, as my wife will tell you). I finally settled on Lower Huron Metropark, which is a ten minute drive from my house. As I walked along the bike path there I realized that I had subconsciously chosen this park in part because of the oak trees with form a canopy over a portion of the trail. I was struck at how remarkable (and scary) the human brain is. I gave no conscious thought to seeking out oak trees and the Blue Jays that inhabit them, but something in my mind pushed me towards that environment. Something within me wanted to experience the thing I had been thinking about earlier.

Knowing God is a similar experience. Despite our assertions to the contrary and the other things that draw us, we desire to know and experience the Lord. We want to know God not just know about God.

I don’t know about you, but every once in a while I will find myself with vague notions of pious intent. I want to surround myself with godly things, hang out with my Christian friends, and do good, righteous, Christian things. I want to change my behaviors to be more ‘Christian’. But the truth is, just like every other idol we seek in this life, these pious intentions will not sustain me. Only the true experience will do. Just like reading about Blue Jays still left me with the desire to see them. Much of our Christian life is built around the trappings of experience. If we’re honest though, the experience of knowing the Lord comes far too rarely. We know volumes about God but have little in the way of practical knowledge of Him.

J.I. Packer puts it this way: “A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about Him.”

We are always longing. We long for objects. We long for people. We long for emotional experiences. All of these things, however, are substitutes for what we truly desire: a vivid, personal relationship with the Lord.

Even our “spiritual” inclinations can, by themselves, be poor substitutes for the real thing. At the end of the day we don’t want to be longing for a great Bible study, but rather a transformative, intimate moment with the Lord. All the trappings of the Christian faith, necessary as they may be, are tools and practices to take us to where we desperately need to go --- into the arms of our Lord. We get into trouble, however, when we mistake the journey for the destination. When we substitute anything, ‘Christian’ or otherwise for intimacy with God, we have gone the easy way and set up our own idol and altar.

Packer again writes: “We must seek, in studying God, to be led by God. It was for this purpose that the revelation was given, and it is to this use that we must put it.”

It is only in moments of great clarity and humility do we see that what we’re really longing for is the only fulfilling thing: our Creator and Lord. We must turn our knowledge about God into knowledge of God. We must seek humbly to search out the Lord through His word, through fellowship, through prayer but never losing focus of our aim: the only One thing; the only satisfying Thing --- God our Father and Christ Jesus His Son.