I’m going to ramble around for a moment here with some very unoriginal thoughts, but since these concepts have truly revolutionized my life and my faith as I’ve come to experience them over the past couple of years, I figure I’m allowed to indulge a wee bit.
Looking back at my 2006, and to a lesser extent 2005, I realize that the overarching theme that stands out above anything is else is how much bigger God is for me now than he was in the past. Even though I consciously and earnestly gave myself to Jesus at a very young age, that didn’t quite translate to my teen years when I should have sought God in the midst of increasing ambition and self-awareness. I credit my lack of a complete spiritual meltdown to the fact I was home-schooled and nurtured by a loving family, but my faith was still largely a cold set of facts I believed to be true yet didn’t necessarily impact my day-to-day existence. Eventually, as I started struggling with some real, painful issues, those facts couldn’t save me.
My God was a popup entity I could summon when I needed Him, and once the crisis had passed or the silly little worship song was over, I could put Him back and go off on my own way, practically forgetting anything I might have accidently learned. Like a jack-in-the-box or the genie in the lamp, it was a relationship I controlled. It was a process I directed. I’m not yet married, but I’ve learned enough about marriage through parents and friends to know that one-way relationships aren’t really relationships at all. Marriages that are simply two sets of one-way relationships soon end up as two sets of zero-way relationships…and the inevitable “d” word is probably not long in coming.
2006 was a year of awakening for me, something I credit to an amazing, bizarre, frightening, and glorious set of circumstances which I’ll talk more about as time goes on. Suffice it to say, 2006 was the year in which I really began to realize Just. How. Big. God. Is. I mean, BIG, as in
BIG!!!
To quote Cypher in the Matrix: “What a mind job!” The more I try to wrap my head around God and His love for me, the more I feel like my mind just isn’t capable yet to connect deeply with this awesome, magnificent Presence. I get snatches of Him, here and there, when I’m praying and praising and pondering on His works, and it’s almost overwhelming — I simultaneously want to run as far away as I can and avoid being so vulnerable, so naked, and yet I never want to let go. Maybe this sounds crazy to some of you reading this. It would have sounded crazy to me too in times past. But 2006 was the year when I began to discover just how big God is. And it’s a path of great joy and peace that I’m willing to sacrifice everything for — if my pride and my fear don’t trip me up.
John the Apostle wrote that perfect love casts out fear, and I sometimes wonder what that means. Maybe it means that in giving up the nice little God-in-the-box that doesn’t challenge or convict you, you instead receive Someone who allows you to face your biggest fears only to find that, compared to the breadth and depth of our Abba Father, they are simply nothing.
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3 Comments
God is big, indeed. Why Islam preaches it all the time, we all know by now, thanks to the Saddam video in court.
God is truly great and big. So big that we should give up trying to grasp him. Instead, we should marvel at his greatness, and be a part of it. God doesn’t seek your utter devotion or beg you for it because we are a part of it – him.
Fact is, there are things beyond our control and we should wonder about it and feel happy that we aren’t faced with the burden of having control of everything. God is everywhere, omnipresent and bugger than WordPress fonts
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Something so huge inflicts fear, yes. And that is why Atheists simply put it off by denying it’s existence.
I understand what you’re saying, Arjun, but I don’t think we should give up trying to grasp what God wants us to know about Him. I believe that if we were created for a purpose, then we can discover that purpose, and it seems a little disappointing to say that God is everywhere and everything because that means God is also hatred, ignorance, pain, suffering, and death.
Wouldn’t you agree that we all, deep down, have some kind of strong feeling that there is something wrong with us and the world and we wish we could do better? Where does that come from?
Hey Jared.
I mentioned in a comment on the Macworld post that our quest for God might be an endless one, but it’s the path itself that gives us so much comfort and hope.
It’s not about giving up seeking the truth, and I do believe that we have a purpose, but that purpose either
a) supercedes our perceptional capabiltiy
or
b) is already evident, in the sense that leading our lives according to good values is our purpose.
I’ll go with the second one because it is what we CAN do actively, while the former seems a more hazy and difficult, rather impossible goal.
I do – and we might differ on this one – believe that God is everywhere, in everything. Even in what we might define as bad and condemn. But in a positive sense: If there were no hatred and bad in the world, would we even see and appreciate the good? I believe in a balance of things, and while I of course don’t support or “thank” bad people for doing bad things, I accept it as part of the universe (used here as a very non-scientific term) we live in.
God is great. But he is also just. At the End Of Days he will let justice be done.
And if God is just, there will be reason for the cause of hatred and pain to anyone. None of us are holy, or free of sins. I feel we must see purpose in everything his creation has yielded. Even in what might be bad at first sight we should stand in wonderment and marvel at this complex thing that we are a part of – and should make the best of it.