In the book The Life of Moses, the question is: ‘How could Moses sit and talk with God face to face as scripture says, and then soon after be plunged into despair when he discovered that the people were rebelling and were going back to the old gods and idolatry and so on? And yet how could he experience these different stages of his own life, of the journey to God?’ And the answer is: ‘It was because he was able to realise how transcendent God is, how out of reach God is.’ This is the really essential point here. It’s by discovering the transcendence of God, the God who is within us but who is also transcendent, beyond anything we can think, imagine or control, that we are able to let go of our preconceptions and of our egotistical desire for God.
( Enlightenment by Laurence Freeman OSB )
