Waiting Time and Beholding

Before I headed to Florida in February, I read Barbara Brown Taylor’s Leaving Church. This is not about leaving the Christian faith as much as leaving her position as ordained clergy in the Episcopal Church. I share with you the quotes I wrote down. I don’t necessarily agree, but I found them fodder for meditating and reflecting.

 

God is found in right relationships, not in right ideas. The parts of the Christian story that had drawn me into the Church were not the believing parts but the beholding parts:

Behold the Lamb of God. Behold I stand at the door and knock.

Christian faith seemed to depend on beholding things that were clearly beyond belief. Mysteries seize the heart, not orthodox doctrine. If it is true that God exceeds all our efforts to contain God, then dumb-foundedness is what all Christians have most in common.

I wanted to recover the kind of faith that has nothing to do with being sure what I believe and everything to do with trusting God to catch me.

 

One of the reasons I like carrying my camera around when I walk thru my neighborhood or explore new areas, is to slow down and behold God’s beauty and wonder in nature.

This quote from Terry Hershey's blog resonates with me:

I think one of the things I love most about photography is that it often elevates the mundane. When you stop a moment, and preserve it forever, and take the care to frame it, light it, and chose one moment over another, you effectively tell the world – or anyone who cares enough to look at your work; Look at this! And if, even in these mundane moments of life, we find something worth looking at, worth showing the world, then we’re effectively saying, Nothing is mundane. David du Chemin.

I can find God in my everyday world if I take the time to look, to behold.

 

Overnight and this morning we have had a dusting of snow, but by Sunday we are forecasted to be in the 60’s. Warm enough to get out and walk.

 

David Gessner in his book Return of the Osprey says: “ March is the waiting time. Everything poised ready to become something else, a world in need of a nudge.”

 

Warmer temperatures might just be that nudge. Spring at last. After this long hard winter, I am ready to get out and do some beholding.

 

 

Reaching For the Invisible God

I have read several of Philip Yancey’s books. Reaching for the Invisible God was relevant for me at this time. I bought this at a library sale months ago, but picked it up to read now because our Adult Bible Fellowship class is studying about ministering in the church and discussing how we relate to God so that we are equipped to minister.

 

If you find God with great ease, suggested Thomas Merton, perhaps it is not God that you have found. Relating to an invisible God has its difficulties, not the least of which is the differences in perspective between God and man.

 

Since God remains invisible, people tend to remake God in their own image. God transcended our limitations by revealing Himself thru Jesus, the full expression of God, yet veiled in human flesh. He reached out to us; how do we reach out to Him?

 

We come to God on His terms, i.e., through faith. Faith means following, trusting, holding out a hand to an invisible Guide. Faith is trust, not certainty. In the presence of certainty, who would need faith? Merton again: “We do not first see, then act; we act, then see. . . . And that is why the man who wants to see clearly before he will believe, never starts the journey.” We must take the first step of knowing God by faith.

 

As Yancey points out, we seldom run into visual clues of God unless we are looking. The pursuit makes possible the encounter. The Spirit of God brings to us recognition of God’s presence in places we may have overlooked: a baby’s smile, a beautiful sunset, the kindness of a friend. Ann Voskamp shines in this department. Her recognition that these “gifts” in our lives come from God, that by being thankful, we build up trust in His goodness complements nicely Yancey’s thoughts. Are you looking? Am I pursuing?

 

Faith gets tested when a sense of God’s presence fades or the very ordinariness of life makes us question if we even matter. God is a self-revealer but also a self-concealer. Isaiah says, “Truly you are a God who hides Himself.” Here is an interesting thought. Yancey speculates that just as in a game of hide ‘n seek where the child does want to be eventually found and delights in being found not ignored, perhaps God delights in being found. He wants us to pursue Him, to make the effort.

 

Faith can only be exercised in circumstances that allow for doubt, such as God’s hiddenness. God is free to reveal or conceal, to intervene or to restrain from intervening, to work within nature or outside it, to rule over the world or to be despised and rejected, to display Himself or limit Himself. Human beings have no competence in trying to figure out all the intricacies of why things happen. Faith means continuing to trust God while accepting the limits of our humanity, i.e., that we cannot answer the “why” questions.

 

Since we are limited, we do better by not looking backward for explanations but forward for redemptive results. God can use the events in our lives to transform us if we let Him. We have to trust in His goodness to redeem the bad. But God respects our freedom, making Himself dependent on our co-operation. Sometimes God allows us to determine the intensity of His presence thru our chosen responses.

 

I cannot learn from Jesus why bad things happen, but I can learn how God feels about tragedy. Jesus gives God a face, and that face is streaked with tears. We see God’s love for us; a love that should remove our doubts and fear. I must accept whatever falls into my bowl (life) knowing that a good God will redeem it if I return that love with trust.