Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
//Have you ever given this verse much thought? Apparently, the Athenians sensed there was more to the divine than what they currently recognized, for they had set up an altar to worship the unknown. Content to honor a mystery, they stood in awe of something or someone indescribable.
Apparently, it is possible to worship God without knowing him. But Paul wanted the Athenians to move beyond reverence, and actually experience God. To “know” God, as the creator of heaven and earth, the source of “life and breath and everything else.”
‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ –Acts 17:28
This, says Paul—blending our whole being into the mystery that is God—is how we ought to experience the divine.
