Use the schema explained above:   Tell God about the situation, listen to God and scripture, dialogue with God as you reflect.

 

Step 1

We think we have You figured out. We have Names for You.  We have descriptions, we have analogies, but we will never be able to define You.  We do know from Jesus that we are loved.  We can love back.

But our descriptions are lame, especially when we take them too literally.   Our ancestors compared You to a King.   You are much more than a King and you don’t exhibit their most odious qualities.   But comparing You to a King, we think we have to kowtow, to be obsequious with praise, to offer you sacrifices because down deep we think that we need to control your anger as with a King who would draw and quarter whomever defied the monarchy.   Our ancestors said You were a jealous God – jealousy is human not Divine.

Neither are you a warrior. Warriors are violent; they need to win at all cost.  Some complain that we have lost the macho-ness.   You are seen as not masculine enough. WE claim a tough guy God.  When James and John wanted to call down an air-strike, (Luke 9:54) You rebuked them – you calmed them down.

We claim that you are all-powerful because that makes us feel stronger by association.  Yet your description of power differs from the macho – “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,1 6 pwho, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God ra thing to be grasped,2 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a tservant,3 being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, woven death on a cross. 9 therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus be very knee should bow, can heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6-11).  Just like we don’t like you saying that the poor are blessed, we don’t like You emptying yourself either.   We want the Law-and-Order God.

Yet, in the first epistle of John, they described You as Love.  Perhaps, we cannot screw up Love.  True our selfishness can masquerade as Love but St. Paul describes it:  He says that Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others; it is not self-aggrandizing.

That description should be sufficient yet we use You, or our human description of You, to control people sociologically.  We don’t like the parable of the Prodigal Son (Prodigal Father) because a wishy-washy father creates a world without consequences. People then might not act the way we want them to.  Just ask the older brother in the parable.  He was furious at his father’s mercy.   If we behave because you are taught to us as unforgiving, or that we have to jump through hoops to be forgiven, can we really Love you in return.   Individualism wants everyone to rise and fall solely on their own efforts or better yet according to their own results.   When we say we want a Christian culture, we want to control how people behave and so we make you the “boogie man,” to get that control.

Philosopher tell us that You are Other- totally Other.   Obviously, we cannot grasp you if You are totally Other and yet You make Yourself present to us. Nevertheless You have reached out to us.   You raised up patriarchs, matriarchs, prophets and finally you sent your Son –  He lives among us to let us actually know You – not define You but rather experience Your presence.  Yet we live by faith and not by sight – yet You have allowed us to experience You.  Every human being has an experience of You – according to Karl Rahner – some are better at describing it than others but none of us get the description totally correct.  Our understanding limps because our words are not big enough to describe You.

So today, thank You for being Love, thank you for Jesus – God among us and thank you for the Holy Breath that dwells within us to be able to love You and others as a small reflection of how You love.

Step 2: Listen to God

New Testament

Isaiah 54:10 Though the mountains fall away and the hills be shaken, My love shall never fall away from you nor my covenant of peace* be shaken, says the LORD, who has mercy on you.   Isaiah 43: 1 ff 1But now, thus says the LORD, who created you, Jacob, and formed you, Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name: you are mine. 2When you pass through waters, I will be with you; through rivers, you shall not be swept away. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, nor will flames consume you. 3For I, the LORD, am your God, the Holy One of Israel, your savior. … 4Because you are precious in my eyes and honored, and I love you, … 5Fear not, for I am with you; from the east I will bring back your offspring, from the west I will gather you. 6I will say to the north: Give them up! and to the south: Do not hold them! Bring back my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth 7All who are called by my name I created for my glory; I formed them, made them.

1 John Chapter 471 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. 8 Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. 9 In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. 10 In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.       1 Cor 19 If I speak in human and angelic tongues* but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. 2And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing 3If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing 4* Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated 5it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, 6it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things 8* Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing. 9For we know partially and we prophesy partially, 10but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things. 12At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known 13* So faith, hope, love remain, these three but the greatest of these is love.

 

Put together what you have said to God and what God has said to you in scripture. Dialogue.