We spend so much of our lives with an opinion, with our minds made up. Even when we don't feel that clear or secure, we have an inclination, a bias, a preferred outlook. It is hard to be an open book and even harder to clear a page of our opinion, bias, inclination. When we relate to God, sort out what we believe about God, the existence of God for us, we weave through all this data or lack of data.
I am in correspondence with a young woman in prison. I did not seek to be a prison correspondent. In fact I suppose I am a rather reluctant one, but I do take seriously this chapter that fell in my lap and I picked up. Drug addiction has been forcefully removed from her life, and there she is with herself again. This chapter is like someone pushed a pause button in her life and she is left to find herself in the inner chamber of aloneness we all have within us. She seems to be finding that God is waiting there yet like many of us, she is unsure this is God or who this God is. Reading the Bible helps just now as does a friend.
She asked me, "Do you have to pray out loud for God to hear you? Because I always pray in my head, but then I wonder, can he hear my prayer like that?" I hear two things here. She senses God now that life is paused and thus she prays, communicates her life. Second how does she know this is real, as God seems somewhere between within her and far away? I am not sure she could lay out these concepts but they are implied as I read.
She has tripped over the truths of God. There is an intimacy with God we must cultivate in order to know God and feel known. Reading the Bible will help but the Word of God is designed to be far closer. In Deuteronomy 30:11-14 we read:
"For this commandment which I command you today is not mysterious for you, nor is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, `Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, `Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it."
We read scripture to clarify what we sense, what we know inwardly and fear to trust because it is an intangible, somewhat a mystery we are invited to court and unwrap. I suppose the difficulty here is we tend to want proof not trust. And when we get proof it is always still something we must trust. I am fond of saying we get God incidences we often mistake for coincidences.
There are many in my life. One was as I returned home from England to enter Seminary finally clear of a potential call. I hit a major road block with my Bishop who had frozen the call process. On the day I learned this, I received in the mail a letter from my parish priest in London saying, "in my prayer it is clear to me you may be coming up to a wall and need help. I have been in touch with..." He went on to lay out a possible path with all the needed contacts. I was confused how he might know any of what had happened in the last 12 hours. We were not yet in the age of electronic communication. We wrote letters rather than call overseas. Coincidence or God incidence? What he wrote became my path.
So when we read of Saul in the Old Testament today, the invasion of the Ammonites, the ox shared, the people assembled under his leadership, the defeat of the Ammonites that follows and this first proof of Saul's ability to lead, is it coincidence or God incidence? Does this prove that God is with the people of Israel as protector in response to their loyalty or is it just good planning and execution. I suppose it depends on which set of eyes one uses to look at the event, those of faith looking behind things or the surface.
In Acts there is no safety in Jerusalem for Jesus' followers as Saul, who will become Paul, is persecuting the early Church. The Apostles scatter. Yet even in this scattered state they continue to preach and win converts to the new way of knowing God in Jesus. In fact we are being set up in these passages for two interventions of God in the life of this early community that will alter the course of things. The dynamic between Philip and Simon will instruct true faith. Saul will shortly be blinded as he is caught between faith in his wrath for God and Christ's compassion. Coincidence or God incidence?
In the Gospel Jesus is up against a wall of disbelief and it will seem to be his undoing. "Prophesy..." Give us proof who you are. Let us see God in you more clearly. All this comes from the realm of committed unbelief. Thus he replies:
"If I tell you, you will not believe; and if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God." Luke 22:67-68.
This becomes additional fodder to do Jesus in. It also becomes the arena for God's next revelation of God's pursuit of us.
It is so very near them yet only faith can see it. This faith is the faith deep within where we encounter God's love for us. This is the "love (that) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." (1 Corinthians 13:7)
When resurrection follows death, this love will be the odd victor to instruct our lives. The proof they seek of Jesus' relationship to the God of eternity will only be seen as we believe.
So to my friend in prison, pray inwardly often as you do. You will be heard. Pray outwardly. You will be heard and perhaps can join others who pray this way. The inner chamber of aloneness is the dwelling place of God. Here a still small voice awaits our waiting and hoping and loving and enduring. The response is not always a yes as you learned from reading Job. It may be a yes to something more long term and life giving we cannot now see.
Occasionally we will see signs. We may even become signs of unmerited love in the lives of others. They will look like coincidences but are they? I believe, so often, they are God incidences.
No comments:
Post a Comment