A Trilogy of Encounter

In the eighth chapter of Acts, a man is reading Scripture and does not understand it.

Philip is sent. He asks one question.

Understandest thou what thou readest?

The man answers: how can I, unless some man shew me?

This is where every encounter with the Word of God begins. Not with mastery. Not with method. With a question, and the humility to admit that something is not yet seen.

These three papers begin in the same place.

Christ looks. He writes something in the dust that no one records. He asks a question that no one expected. And the one who is asked finds, in the silence before the answer, that something in him has already been seen.

The trilogy moves as all true encounter moves.

A man is found before he knows he is being sought. A question is asked before he knows what he seeks. The silence before his answer is itself a kind of answer.

These are not three studies of three texts. They are one movement in three moments. Read them in order. Do not hurry the second before the first has settled. The third will not open until the second has been honestly faced.

God speaks. Man is revealed and responds. Christ mediates and fulfils.

This is the pattern Scripture does not impose but discovers. It is there in the garden. It is there at the well. It is there on the road to Emmaus. It is there wherever a man stops, looks up from what he is reading, and asks to be shown.

These papers are offered in that same asking.

M.F. Robb