by Jim Lynch                                                          USA                            09.05.2026

Now, what’s to be done about language: Its limitations readily apparent and palpable? Yet, it is what we have – word and gesture. We approach meaning and truth obliquely, at odd angles, only indirectly – and with humility. Our approach is always asymptotic – never quite arriving.
Metaphor, through images, carries meaning: “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.” We live and we learn by metaphor. It is fundamental to language and understanding – both deeper and richer than systemic language, ad harder to define and contain. The Bible often speaks in metaphor. And Jesus commonly used parables, stories, metaphors and images to draw us into God’s mystery.
Richard Feynman, a physicist of great renown, explained how he approached difficult concepts. He said he had to visualize them in order to understand them. Only then did he proceed to mathematical proofs. And he stated that he had to be able to explain them in terms that a child could understand. It struck me that that is what Jesus is about. All the intricate and abstract treatises on Jesus can seem to make him less approachable. He is God’s word, not an abstraction, but in the way that he lved and spoke. Like Feynman, we can visualize Jesus, we can “visualize” God, in what he said and did. And again, like Feynman, Jesus’ ove can be understood, perhaps best, through the eyes and heart of a child – in fact, the child in each of us…