After many years of an internal process of changes in my spiritual development I found a statement that caused me to do some thinking. I was actually encouraged as I evaluated this question:
“John, you haven’t included enough about God in your writings and posts. What’s Up?”
I began to search my mind, my relationships and my surroundings for an answer to this challenge.
I looked at my my most significant relationship with my husband, Larry. I see so much of God in him. He’s patient, kind, loving, always considering others. His eyes are full of grace and care. I am filled with what God has to offer through him.
Then, I thought about my close friendships. Wow! I’m seeing people who give sacrificially of themselves, their finances, their possessions. I find these friends to be amazingly unconditional in their love for others and for me. I see so much of “god” in them every time I’m with them. I continue to hear stories through their lives that encourage me, challenge me, and how they fill the world around them with love and care for others.
As I’m looking out the window right now, I see amazing beauty. Little birds grabbing seeds they’re enjoying so much are flitting around like crazy. The fallen leaves have created a beautiful carpet of rusts, golds, browns on the entire floor below them. Their bark is turning shades of gray and white as they prepare for the winter ahead. The special variety of Azalea plants are still blooming red and white. God’s special design team is working hard to continue providing seasonal decor that challenges the best human artists’s capture of what they’re seeing. I’m seeing it firsthand.
Last evening some friends and I went to see a movie. It was about the lives of several people who were just trying to find their way through challenges they faced. As they did, I saw a reflection of community, men, women, children, all part of the support team to hold each other’s lives close. I saw them move forward, make mistakes, pick up themselves and try again. In their love for one another, I see God’s heart.
What I’m trying to say is that through the last ten years, I’ve grown. I’ve broadened my view of God to encompass so much more than I ever did before. Today, God isn’t designed in humanlike form and character. Rather, God is ALL things, ALL beings, ALL that I can see and so much more. God is all things I cannot see, cannot understand, and cannot wrap my head around.
It is God that connects all things together. God is the invisible glue between everything physical and non-physical. Much like the air that exists inbetween the trees, all is one. Like the ocean water that resides between the continents, all is one, ALL is God. Like the seemingly void places in space between the planets and stars, This is God, all of it.
God is benevolent, redemptive, restorative. Within the pinecones that fall to the bed of needles below that are designed to replace themselves, God is at work within the water, the soil, the leaves, and the seeds to renew, restore, rebuild. Even when we see the old abandoned house falling into the earth through decay, the elements used to build the house to begin with are at work creating new life through their rotting timbers as they become soil again.
God isn’t as small as 6000 years of what we’ve been taught to be our created existence.Oh NO! God is eternal, no beginning, no end. Redeeming from always before, and restoring through always after. God is the BIG PICTURE of life, far too big for a human mind to comprehend.
So, to traditional theology. When I say “traditional” I’m referring to Jesus, death, resurrection, heaven, hell, eternal life etc. Actually, I’ve let go of all of that. All of those perspectives to me, appear to be all man made answers to the largest questions of life. Where did we come from, what do we do with “badness” around us, and what happens when we die?
I always wanted security in my life. So, these theological developments seemed to fit the bill for me. They gave concrete answers to those big life questions. I promoted them, hung my life on them, held tightly to their meanings in life for me. I wanted so much for my challenging life to end so I could go on to the perfect, eternal existence in “heaven.”
But as I grew, and experienced more life, these things just didn’t seem to work any more. There were too many loopholes in them. I found too many contradictions within their tenants. When I was more of a conservative believer, I always struggled with the concept of prayer, praying to the BIG God for answers. Asking for the uncomfortable things about life to change, or to end. I saw so much suffering around me and wondered where God was, and why the answers seemed to be so subjective, if at all. I found most believers like myself would shuffle off our misunderstandings to “God’s ways aren’t our ways.” We did this largely because we had no other answers to hang onto.
I created concept of heaven in my own mind that worked for me, It was the perfect place, where I could spend eternity in deep, truthful, conversation with people past, present, and future. It was a place where I could find restoration from the mistakes I’d made and opportunity to work them through with others without any defensiveness on either side. It was a place where all truth would be known so reconciliation could be a reality.
I’ve been challenged to rethink most of my image of heaven. I’ve not known or heard of one person who has been there and returned to tell us all what it is like. The only records we have that there is a heaven is described in the Bible where there are many conflictive stories of what may or may not happen in my afterlife, or for anyone else. Therefore, I’ve had to go through grieving the certainty that I once held regarding my entrance to the perfect Heaven.
In so doing, I’ve come to appreciate more each and every day. Actually, when I believed in certainty that I’d be going to the perfect heaven, I wanted to end this life sooner than later. I figured this life was much too challenging, and often painful to continue it longer than necessary. Now, NOW, I want to live long. I want to make it to 100 years or longer! I actually want to live. But there’s more to the story than losing certainty about heaven.
I’ve actually begun to experience heaven on earth. I’ve discovered in the last 10 years true reconciliation, like the experiences I’d hope for after I die. I’ve seen incredibly honest, truthful conversation between me and others that I’d harmed, or that I’d carried a burden for. I’ve seen intervention on years of pain and discouragement come to tears of love, renewal, and restoration. There are now too many to list, or describe, but trust me, they happen more often than I could have imagined! And, they’re happening in this life! I can’t wait for more of my heaven now.
I see God everywhere I go, I experience a real God in more ways than I could have thought. I feel and experience a more real God now than I ever did when I held to a small god in a rigid box called religion. I’m thankful for the steps I took to get to this place. I’m thankful that at one time I chose to embrace God back into my life, though a very minimal experience as compared to what I see now. Those years led me to continue seeking.
I have to say that it took a virtual “bomb” in my life to shake me loose from those years of conservative Evangelicalism. I found that I truly needed to see more in order to make it through to the next place in my life. Seeing more meant that I had to let go of the image in front of me so that I could open up the perspective.
It’s now just a few days before Christmas. This week, we went to see a new movie, “Journey to Bethlehem.” It is a recreation of the story of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus’ birth. But this version goes into more of the humanity of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Jesus’ birth. Some Evangelicals have criticized this production claiming it’s not Biblical. But for me, it was quite clever and entertaining. I was able to watch it more easily because it was more realistic to me. I liked its honesty.
Christmas holds a different meaning for me now. It’s a time to gather with others, to share joyful exchanges, but as far as the Jesus part, well, I see all of that as a story that has been created to somehow make God more real to humanity. I’m not sure that is relevant to me at this time in my life. I see God quite well, and in human form, every day.
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