We live in an unbelieving age
but one which is markedly and lopsidedly spiritual…
an age that has domesticated despair
and learned to live with it happily.
There is something in us
that demands the redemptive act,
that demands that what falls
at least be offered the chance to be restored.
…what <modern man> has forgotten is the cost of it.
His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether,
and so he has forgotten the price of restoration.

This is an unlimited God
and one who has revealed himself specifically.
It is one who became man and rose from the dead.
It is one who confounds the senses and the sensibilities,
one known early on as a stumbling block.
There is no way to gloss over this specification
or to make it more acceptable to modern thought.
This God is the object of ultimate concern
and he has a name.
~Flannery O’Connor from a 1963 lecture published in Mystery and Manners

He has an unpronounceable name,
this God of specificity,
yet still He asks us to breathe it out
with each breath we take —
even if we don’t believe.

This God of specificity knows our name,
as He formed each one of us for a reason
and it is His voice calling out to us —
even when we aren’t listening.

He is worthy of our attention as
we are the object of His ultimate concern.