Moses and the elders go up the mountain and see the God of Israel. Under His feet is something like a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And they beheld God, and ate and drank.
My faith had always been so word-focused - God communicates through Scripture, through intellect. But this passage insists on something else: beauty, visual splendor, the sensory experience of the divine. They don't just hear - they see. And the response isn't terror but... eating? Sharing a meal in God's presence?
I started actually going to the cathedral in my city, sitting in the presence of stained glass and stone, letting that beauty speak to me. My Protestant suspicion of ritual and visual theology was robbing me of this: the truth that encountering God can be gorgeous, sensory, participatory.
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