Quick Summary:

Some things cannot be explained…they can only be experienced. And if we try to dissect them, to take them apart, to break them down into component pieces, we only diminish them…diminish them and still end up missing their meaning.

Two such encounters with the Divine greet us this morning—the first tells of Elijah ascending to the heavens in a chariot of fire. The second tells of Jesus transfigured before Peter, James and John, a sacred rendezvous with Elijah and Moses, and the Divine Voice on the Mountain of Transfiguration.

Both episodes are shot through with mystery, and we come away with a sense that those who stewarded these stories struggled mightily to convey with human language what no human tongue could convey—the unfathomable reality of the God of light and of cloud both manifest and yet hidden.