HOW WE RELATE TO GOD

IV. HOW WE RELATE TO GOD

1. The Bible

In some ways we have already referred to this in our talk of how we get our knowledge of God. Yes, if we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, if we want to hear the voice of the I AM, what is more obvious than that we need to read the scriptures. The more we do this, the greater the possibilities are that we will come to know that God is indeed speaking to us through the Word.  

2. Prayer

I think it is quite obvious that when we want to speak to God we engage in what we call prayer. Prayer is really nothing more than a special word that has entered our vocabulary to refer for the most part specifically to communication with a deity. To be sure, it is sometimes used otherwise, quite often in poems or songs to do with love. Have you ever noticed that in these cases it usually describes an unspoken wish or message, one that is not communicated directly? Sometimes there is also the idea that it is just fantasy, it isn’t expected that there will be an answer. That is the secular definition of prayer: “an earnest request, an entreaty, a supplication”. The only difference in the dictionary’s definition of prayer when it refers to God is that it adds that it is a humble request

This idea that prayer is just a request should not be the case when we are engaged in prayer with God. Notice that I said with. Real prayer in the religious sense, at least in the Christian understanding, should be a two-way street. I think it often isn’t because we don’t go about it properly. We may give some thanks, some praise, but mostly we are hurriedly dashing off a string of often poorly thought out requests. Then we’re done. How can we expect an answer? That’s like writing a letter. You do that; send it off, especially on the Internet, never to hear about it again sometimes. Actually, of course, the Internet actually does better than that. It usually tells you in graphic terms, such as that there was a fatal error at such and such a place, that your letter wasn’t deliverable. Prayer should be a dialog. If it’s not we need to really look at how we go about prayer, and I’m speaking to myself here as much as to you.

3. Meditation

Meditation or contemplation is something that I think is rather foreign to most of us. It’s not a discipline we, in our busy lives, often take time for. Therefore, it’s difficult to even speak about it. However, we know that it is another practice that makes possible communication with God. It is a method that requires even more preparation and commitment than prayer. To meditate we really have to leave the world, our everyday life, behind, find a quiet place where we can just let go and focus our minds on God. 

 

The secular use of the word meditation refers to “thinking deeply and continuously” about something, “reflecting, pondering.” My dictionary also refers to meditation as a “solemn reflection on sacred matters as a devotional act”. I think that’s rather a limited definition, but what can we expect from a secular dictionary?

 

4. Relationship

This brings us back to where I began. God is not a thing, a ‘sacred matter’ we can just think about. Too often that is how we view God though. God Is the I AM, remember? God is alive. God is a being, moreover, a being that can and wants to relate to us. That seems to be why we were created. God wanted more beings to have relationships with. To be sure, the Bible may not be very clear on this at first glance, particularly the Creation account itself. However, the whole story of the Bible should make this clear. In fact, ultimately, God had to come to earth as a human to understand us and be understood and known by us. God chose to walk in our sandals, our shoes, and our moccasins, whatever it is we wear. It finally came down to that. God had to become one of us. The Creator became the creature.  

God’s love is too vast to be confined to heaven and a few legions of angels. God’s generosity knows no bounds. His grace has no limits. When humankind was created, God gave them a couple of tasks, but the main one seems to be simply to multiply and fill the earth. Isn’t that kind of odd? That doesn’t strike us as a particularly divine calling, to reproduce. That doesn’t seem at first glance to be a religious practice.

I think these lines of thinking only reflect how far we have come from the Garden of Eden. Before there was sin, we lived in a perfect world that only required some care taking, some gardening. We didn’t have to worry about where next meal was going to come from, about making sure we had shelter from the elements. We didn’t have to worry about jobs and taxes and not even about death, yet.

What was left? Life was about relationships and communication, the more the better. What is this leading to? Sex! Ah, some of you squirmed. Again, this shows how far we’ve come from the Garden. Let’s be honest though. What’s on most of our minds most often? If we took away all the cares and concerns of the world, some of which I’ve already referred to, what would be left? A lot more time to focus on sex.

Now, when I speak her of sex, I’m not referring just to intercourse, although that’s the ultimate expression of human love that involves all our senses. That is the ultimate expression of love with another person. Was this God’s other great idea? There was already love in heaven. But we don’t think of the angels as sexual beings. In fact, we don’t think of God as a sexual being. But again, be honest, what, next to the drive to stay alive, which involves getting food, obtaining shelter, in our climate at least – what is the strongest drive we have? It’s the sexual. Or is it?

Well, if it is, I think it’s only so because of The Fall, because of sin. Don’t; get me wrong. It’s not that sex is wrong or sinful. Not at all. But if our strongest drive is to another person, and with sex in mind, we have ‘fallen short of the glory of God’.

If you have been listening carefully, you will have noticed that I never used the word he or she to refer to God in this whole message so far. It’s not easy to do that when we have become so used to addressing the I AM in human terms.

God is not sexual. We all accept that. Somehow though, too many of us mean by that that God is beyond, above sex. We’re still not sure that God should have anything to do with sex. But God created sex, so how could there be anything wrong with it? Well, of course the thing that’s wrong about it is if we do view it as the ultimate in relationships. Indeed, isn’t that the problem with sex in our world? The less people engage in relationships with one another, the more they turn to sex in a distorted desire to achieve what we were created for. The hunger has become for the creature and the physical, not the spiritual and the Creator.

It’s not by accident that our relationship to God as individuals, and as a people too - and that’s very important - that this relationship is compared to a bride and groom. Sex is the next most important experience after life and relationships. Indeed, as we were created it is inseparable from our – should I say – other? drive for relationships. In fact, the King James Bible speaks of sexual relationship as knowing. We moderns think, what a euphemism, why can’t we just say intercourse or coitus or whatever technical term we like to use?  Well, it’s because, in God’s design, there is a lot more to sex than just an act. When we know someone most intimately, well, that often includes sex. But there’s more to it than that. At least there should be. Relationships don’t survive on sex alone. We know that. Relationships come first.

This is also why, when we sin sexually, that we, and the others involved, suffer perhaps more than after committing any other sin except murder. Sex is at the core of our being as part of our drive for relationship. However, it is only involved in the human level.  We are created first to relate to God. I think it’s why sex is so increasingly distorted in our increasingly Godless society. When we forsake God, our number one priority in relationships, we turn to the human physical part that’s left. God planned that to include relationship too, but when we destroy relationships by the many ways we do, what’s left? Empty sex. The Evil One knows what’s important. Satan knows where to trap us. If we can’t have the real thing., give us the substitute. Since we don’t have the real thing, which we are created with such a hunger for, we go crazily after the substitute. Just look at our society. Sex is everywhere. The media is full of it. The business world is full of it, in more ways than one. It’s even in our bad language. What do people say when they swear? It’s either something to do with God or with sex. Interesting huh? But not accidental.

If we were still perfect humans, would our strongest drive not be to relate to God? We talked of God creating us to relate to. I hope those of us who are or have been married and partaken in sex enjoy it. No human experience can beat it. It’s one thing that’s uniquely human. God made it to be so. That’s how he could be assured that the world would fill up with more and more people for him to love. So there’s the full circle again. Sex is part of God’s great design. But still, it is God’s design, not something that evolved just for survival of the species. God is behind it all, in it all, and that’s where our ultimate focus should be. That’s where the ultimate relationship is to be had. Our human relationships, wonderful as they can be, are only a shadow of what our most important relationship can be. After all, our human relationships, at least the sexual, would appear to end with this life. Jesus said there was no marriage, by which he also meant sexual union, in heaven. Our most important relationship is one that we need to establish here for eternality.

God Is, and God is to be related to. Praise be to God! 

_____________________

Lorne Brandt

Walking a labyrinth

Walking a labyrinth is referred to as a sacred experience. We consider ourselves fortunate to live where our front window looks out from our fourth floor level to our local Anglican church, St. Alban's.  A year or two ago they made a labyrinth at the corner of their property. My wife and I walked it when it was first introduced to the public. Today I walked that for the third time. Actually, I have a confession to make. I walked circularly up to the center, then straight out. I don't know what purists would say that does to the experience. I still get something out of it.

On my three walks through the labyrinth,  I have reflected on how the experience relates to life. More to the point, for me, as a Christian, how it relates to my walk in that faith. It also reminds me of Jesus' last resolute walk toward Jerusalem and his death. Our walks, our lives, are not likely to end like His, but we need to be resolute too. We have the advantage too of having Jesus walk with us, having covered the ground before.

Embarking on the walk is making a choice to leave everything else aside, at least for a short period of time. Of course, embarking on the Christian walk, is hopefully for life and eternity, but it also involves a choice of leaving certain things aside.

One does not have to walk very far in the labyrinth, before one has to take a turn. This is like life. Life is not a straight road. One soon finds that one cannot take the path too quickly either. There is the constant curve to the center, not to mention the 180° turns that occur at varied intervals. To begin with, they seem unpredictable. Indeed, life throws us many unpredictable turns.

One also has to walk slowly to keep one's balance on this curving and turning path. At least I do, at my age. That may see more than one thing about my age. Young people who have not perhaps experienced much of life yet, who are healthy, may sail through a labyrinth at a good clip. Perhaps when they're older, having been buffeted by more of life's experiences, they will travel more slowly as well.

Not keeping one's balance of course means falling, or nearly doing so. Again, life throws many situations into  our walk where we are in danger of falling. For the Christian, of course, this means as well failing: failing to live up to our own expectations, perhaps failing to live up to our Master's.  Sometimes our expectations differ from our Master's and even exceed what he might want from us at any point. So also then, walking the labyrinth properly, like going through life with discipline, can help one develop one's balance.

And one walks the path of the labyrinth, one also quickly becomes aware that there are many other segments of the pathway on either side and sometimes in front or behind of one. This leads to the question of choice. Does one take a shortcut and cut across two of each other paths.  Unless one knows the labyrinth by heart, one might find that one is not taking a shortcut after all. How is this like life? Perhaps it is like when we try to go our own way. We are not really following the path that our Master has laid out for us. We may indeed shorten the path, but is that to our benefit? We are reducing the experience of the labyrinth, of life, that is in The Plan. If we make a choice where we end up lengthening our experience on the labyrinth, that may reflect real life choices where we make life more difficult for ourselves.

Sometimes the path has deceptively long stretches, and one might be tempted to pick up the pace. That could increase the risk of losing your balance or not navigating the turn properly that will inevitably come up. It might also rob one of the opportunity to think and learn, to become more stable. This is again like life. When things seem to be going well, when everything seems calmly to be going our way,  there is a tendency to get careless and not keep a close enough eye on where you are going.

Then again, sometimes the stretches on the paths are short and one is turning frequently. Here one really has to be careful about keeping on the path and keeping one's balance. This is like the rougher stretches in life, where one has to be more careful.  Indeed, sometimes they use short stretches and frequent turns can seem pointless. We have all had periods in life where we have gone through the valleys that the psalmist talks about, where life seems pointless, and God seems far beyond the hills to which we look above for help. We have all experienced times where the storms of life toss us backwards and forwards and we really wonder if we are on the path to our Master, our Center.

Through this all then, one learns that one has to keep one's eyes on the path. You really can't look around too much, or you could step off the path and lose your way. I don't have to explain how that is like life.

Finally, since the  labyrinth, at least in this case, is circular, which I believe it always is, there is always that centripetal force to the center. We can compare this to our Spirit-guided attraction to our Center, who is Jesus Christ. The curvature of the labyrinth may make us feel that we are getting ever closer to the center, and indeed we are, and will get there if we are patient and follow the path, but it is not a direct route. Again, we all know that in life, our route to the Center is not simple or direct. Indeed, we must follow the path that the Master has laid out for us, once we have accepted The Call to enter this path. That makes our path no longer simply human but a divine plan. That will bring us to the Center at the time the Master has planned. Meanwhile, we need to always keep our eyes on the prize, as the old spiritual goes, "Keep your eyes on the prize, Hold on, Hold on."

If you walk the labyrinth, see what your experiences are. I don't think you can walk it without learning something, at least if you reflect on it at least somewhat.

That's the reflection from Lulu Island today.