Lifting the Veil of Ordinariness
When God reveals himself to people in the Bible a common human response is fear. Sometimes the person experiences cognitive disorientation due to the essential “otherness” of the God-encounter. This is, partly, what happened to Peter, James and John in Mark 9 when they saw Jesus “transfigured” in front of their eyes (the biblical Greek word for “transfigure” is metamorphe; literally, “transformed”). He had a God-encounter that was extra-ordinary.
I believe we all have a “veil of ordinariness” that covers our experiencing. At the transfiguration this veil was momentarily lifted off of Peter, James and John. Peter is so shook up that he blurts out some irrelevant things, so irrielvant that Mark adds, parenthetically, “he did not know what he was saying.”
If we can say anything about God, it is surely that God is not ordinary. God, instead, is “glorious.” This word “glory” refers to the attributes a person or thing has. For example, a fw days ago a hummingbird flew within 3 feet of my face and hovered in front of me. I heard its wings and felt the wind from them. In other words, I experienced the “glory” of the hummingbird. Unfortunately, because I’ve never had a hummingbird hover in front of me like a blackhawk helicopter with its beak pointed at my eyes, I did the wrong thing - I waved my hands and yelled “Get away from me!”
For me, following Jesus is an extraordinary thing that includes extraordinary encounters and revelations from a supernatural God. I’ve met some who, when encountering this, tell God to “Get away from me” because it doesn’t fit their small world of ordinariness. The good news is that God wants to meet you and reveal his glory in you and through you. God wants to transform your experiential default setting from “ordinary” to “extraordinary.”