A Beholding Kind of Life
I’ve been simmering in the biblical word behold throughout the pandemic. Nothing like a stay-at-home order to bring my clamoring self to the surface and expose my resistance to lean into beholding God rather than all of my other fleshly tactics to make life feel more comfortable than it is. I began this beholding journey about ten years ago and it has been soul-nourishing, yet challenging to live into. The book Writing the Icon of the Heart, which first whet my appetite for understanding the significance of the biblical meaning of behold, seemed to be calling out to me as I’d open my Kindle each morning this spring. I sensed an invitation from Jesus to dip back into beholding waters. Except that I’m more of a plunger than a dipper. So I dove head-first into the deep. One of the quotes which most stirred me the first time I read the book is…
In the Bible, the imperative form of the word behold has more than 1300 occurrences in Hebrew and Greek. After God has blessed the newly created humans, the first word he speaks to them directly is “Behold…” (Gen.1:29). This is the first covenant, and the only one necessary; the later covenants are concessions to those who will not behold. In the NRSV, however, the word behold appears only twenty-seven times and not at all in the New Testament. Without the behold, how are we to understand the end of Matthew’s Gospel, “Behold! I am with you always, to the end of the age. For it is in the covenant of beholding that the risen Christ is with us until the end of time. The movement of beholding is a lived recapitulation of the en-Christing of Philippians 2:5-11. Yet, the word the NRSV uses in Matthew 28:20 instead of behold—remember—has nothing of the covenant of engagement or self-emptying. It debases the text and raises the question, ‘How is the risen Christ with us until the end of time?’...The word remember is one-sided and dualistic. It seeks to circumscribe and control. It struggles unsuccessfully to express what is implicit in the word behold. The NRSV has taken a restatement of the first covenant of Genesis and turned it into an isolated memory that reduces those whom Jesus leaves behind to orphans, abandoned and alienated, contravening Jesus’s promise in John 14:18.
This quote still stirs me. Discovering that to behold God implies the with-ness of God blew my mind. Discovering that the word behold had been almost completed stripped from some biblical translations was bewildering. The word had meant nothing to me as a long-time Christ-follower. But this understanding stirred my desire to grow in my capacity to behold God. I’m a bit of a sucker for this with-God kind of life.
Silence and beholding are our natural state. As Irenaeus puts it, “The glory of God is the human being fully alive, and the glory of the human being is the beholding of God”: the two clauses are interdependent. —Ross
First, silence and beholding didn’t feel like my natural state at the time. It felt other-worldly; like it would take a transfiguration to find my “natural state.” Thankfully, I believed in a God who I think delighted in transfiguring people. Second, I had heard the first line of that quote at least 100 times; however, I’d never heard it coupled with the glory of the human being is the beholding of God. I wanted to taste and see how this life of beholding would change me. So I began a journey into a life of beholding, into a life shaped by greater silence and being with the Trinity.
Hebrew and Greek authors are careful to distinguish bodily seeing from beholding or inward vision...the kingdom of heaven cannot be manifest among you until it is manifest within you. Beholding entails all the moral and ethical outward behavior that Jesus teaches. To put this another way, ordinary seeing is analytical; it makes hierarchies, discriminates, grasps, and controls. Beholding is inclusive, organic, ungrasping, and self-emptying. —Ross
I asked Jesus to guide me into this mysterious path from bodily seeing to inward vision because I was struggling to even comprehend the anatomy of a beholding life. I’ve grown attuned to how when my flesh is not coupled with the Spirit of God within me, I am inclined toward grasping and controlling, or defending and a host of other self-protecting responses. Yet beholding ushers me into a space with God in which I can release my grip and rest in the reality that He’s a loving, good, and kind God and a faithful Shepherd.
Confession
I intended to write this post last Wednesday so it would post on Thursday. As I was reading and pondering what I might write about beholding, I realized my intention to behold God had shifted to somewhat of a treasure hunt—spending time with God so He would give me the words to write. I was grasping for thoughts and wasn’t enjoying God’s with-ness. I wondered what it was like for God to just long to be with me while I was attempting to use Him. Fatigued and broken over my grasping, I stopped and rested my head on His shoulder, apologizing for using Him. Repentance for me was letting go of that week’s post and returning to the silence in the presence of the Father, Son and Spirit, that I might rejoin their organic dance of love—self-emptying, ungrasping, inclusive because they are Lover, Beloved and Love Itself.
Pay attention to either resistance or attraction to beholding God as you journey through this week…and beyond. What does beholding stir in you?