Una voz humilde y entrecortada

Armodoxy for Today: A Humbling Choked Voice

In birthing rooms, homes, and fields throughout the world, parents meeting their child for the first time are overwhelmed with tears and choke on finding the words to express that awesome moment of life. Our Lord Jesus refers to this moment, “When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.” (John 16)

At a full solar eclipse a few years back, as the Moon covered the Sun and only the solar flares were dancing around the circular disk in the sky, I was moved to sing the Armenian Hymn, sharagan, “Aravod Looso” – a praise to the morning Sunrise and to the Light. Try as I may, words were not coming out of my mouth. I was choking in emotion. Overwhelmed by the event.

In 1985 Carl Segan and his wife Ann Druyan authored the book, “Contact.” The story explores the possibilities of contact between humans and extraterrestrial beings.  About a decade later the story was made into a motion picture starring Jodi Foster and Matthew Machaney. It was fascinating because the story was written from a science perspective, as would be expect from Carl Segan, who was an astronomer and planetary scientists, and very eloquently articulated scientific concepts for the average man. He was an advocate of skeptical scientific inquiry and the scientific method. Yet at the end of Contact he concedes that words and the expressions we possess are inadequate in explaining or expressing the events of the first human contact with the extraterrestrial world. In common parlance we can say he choked.

Los eventos que superan la vida misma, ya sea que exploten en el cosmos o al ver por primera vez una nueva vida, nos llenan de humildad. Nos cortan la voz para que hablemos con el corazón y con una lágrima en los ojos. Son recordatorios sutiles de la grandeza de Dios.

Oramos con el Libro del Eclesiástico: Por causa de Él, cada uno de sus mensajeros tiene éxito, y por su palabra todo se mantiene unido. Podríamos decir más, pero nunca sería suficiente; que la palabra final sea: “Él lo es todo”. ¿Dónde encontraremos la fuerza para alabarlo? Porque Él es más grande que todas sus obras. El Señor es asombroso y muy grande, y su poder es maravilloso. Glorifiquen al Señor y exáltenlo tanto como puedan, porque Él supera incluso eso. Amén. (capítulo 43)