I was privileged to talk through and around how we might experience God with a 13-year old this past week. It was a detailed and lengthy conversation that explored emotional versus rational experiences of (and responses to) God, and whether one is more ‘valid’ than the other.
Participating in the conversation allowed me to reflect on my own varied God-journey: from (a few) sensory and emotional oments and events, to (many) times where my responses have been more logically reasoned. With many in between….! All of these responses have also happened within a spectrum of individual to collective/communal ‘spaces’. In places of peace and solitude, in spaces of song and noise, while being prayed for in a small group, while talking in a cafe, while lying alone in my bed, while sitting and moving in the Ilam school hall, while talking on the phone to one other…
Is one moment more valid or more real for me than another? No. Together these moment of grace, these liminal spaces, these thin-places, have allowed me to (only very partially) experience God. I’m like a blind person holding onto one part of an elephant at a time – in that moment I can describe and understand and explore God in that particular way. But I can’t hope or claim to understand the ‘whole’ of God. [Of course, Jesus was the human expression of God and helps hugely in our understanding who God might be, however in the end, God is still beyond our human understanding]
But if I turn this around and think about me being a part of Gods larger story (rather than me being the lead character!), I sense that God is not too worried about distinctions, dichotomies and hierarchies of response. I was reading through Romans chapter 8 and was struck with how the trinitarian God is described as responding to us. It sounds like Gods involvement with us happily encompasses the full range of human experience!
“God himself has taken up residence in your life … this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ … the alive-and-present God … moves into your life. God lives and breathes in you. God’s Spirit beckons. God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along …& does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.
God decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. God called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun. God embraces our condition and exposes him/herself to the worst by sending his own Son. The One who died for us is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Jesus loves us. Jesus has embraced us.”
(from the Message version … with creative licence and severe editing in play!)
