Monday: Describing the Indescribable

Monday: Describing the Indescribable

Written on 12/23/2024
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There are several reasons why you or I might be unable to describe a Christmas gift. We might be overcome with emotion so that "words fail us," as we say. Or we might be unable to identify the gift. We might open it (as my father opened a gift on one occasion) and say, "It's beautiful, just what I always wanted. Uh—what is it?" Or we might care so little for a gift that we might not even bother to describe it. What can possibly make a gift indescribable? Since all human presents are describable, it is clear that the only thing that can make a gift indescribable is that it is more than human.

There are several reasons why you or I might be unable to describe a Christmas gift. We might be overcome with emotion so that “words fail us,” as we say. Or we might be unable to identify the gift. We might open it (as my father opened a gift on one occasion) and say, “It’s beautiful, just what I always wanted. Uh—what is it?” Or we might care so little for a gift that we might not even bother to describe it. 

What can possibly make a gift indescribable? Since all human presents are describable, it is clear that the only thing that can make a gift indescribable is that it is more than human. It has to have something of God mixed with it. And, of course, that is precisely what Paul was thinking of when he penned the words that are our text. He had been thinking of very human gifts: the gifts of the Corinthians to the poor in Jerusalem. But the subject of giving had turned his mind to God and the gift of Christ to His people, which is the greatest of all possible gifts, and he ended his comments by referring to this divine bounty. He said, “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift” (2 Cor. 9:15). 

This text contains only eight words, yet it points us beyond words. It points us to a gift which, if we have it, makes us richer than any merely secular king and happier than any earthly potentate. 

When Paul speaks of Jesus as God’s “indescribable gift” it is evident that he is not merely toying with words or exaggerating by an undisciplined use of superlatives. He is only saying what is patently true and is as true for us as it was for him. Who has been able to describe the gift of our salvation from God in Christ? Painters have tried. Some of the most beautiful paintings in the world are of the Holy Family or Madonna and Child. My spirit soars when I look at a Raphael Madonna or stand silently before a nativity work by Fra Filippo Lippi. But I know that, however beautiful these works may be, they do not do justice to their subject. And the painters knew this too, else they would not have continued to paint these masterpieces. 

Musicians have tried to describe Christ’s coming. By general acclaim there are probably no grander attempts to do this in all history than George Frederick Handel’s Messiah, with its glorious “Hallelujah Chorus,” or Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. But glorious as these compositions are, I cannot believe they match the angel chorus above the fields of Bethlehem, not to mention that full chorus of the praise of the redeemed recorded in the book of Revelation. Even those final choruses in Revelation fall short of describing God’s gift, for it is necessary for those who sing them to continue day and night and never stop singing: 

To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb 

be praise and honor and glory and power, 

for ever and ever! . . . Amen!” (Rev. 5:13-14). 

Have poets described the gift of God to perfection? Obviously not. The English poet Richard Crashaw (c. 1613-1649) wrote: 

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!

Eternity shut in a span; 

Summer in winter; day in night; 

Heaven in earth, and God in man. 

Great little one, whose all-embracing birth 

Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heav’n to earth. 

I do not know of any verse that packs more good theology into less space with more suggestive wording than this stanza, but these words also fall short of describing the indescribable, as all efforts must.