Ever look out a window on your flight, gazed off into the distance and momentarily felt an almost indescribable longing for something? You are not alone.
The Christian contemplative Rudolf Otto coined the word “numinous” to describe that greater reality which transcends the daily experience of our lives on this earth. The numinous is the sense human beings possess that something mysterious and of ultimate meaning is present in the universe, but beyond the full reach of our senses. One might call this “something” both the wellspring and the object of the basic spirituality that every person possesses.
Of course, being Christian, Otto correctly identified the “something” as a Someone. It was in his study of the holy attributes of God that he first used the term.
For the contemplative believer the mysterious yearning to enter the true meaning of our existence, a yearning that we may have known since childhood, can only be satisfied in the God of the Bible. Our inherent spiritual longing can someday find its fulfillment in the Holy One of Israel and Him alone.
I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows… 2 Corinthians 12:2-3 (ESV)
