God and Man

One of the most fascinating relationships that I know of is between God and man. We are fascinated with the concept of God and God is fascinated with us. This relationship is unlike any other. Unlike our relationship with other humans, we are not peers. The closest thing to understanding our relationship with God is that of a parent. While similar, it's not exactly the same. He's not only our parent, but our Creator, Designer and Maker- down to the smallest atom. His relationship to us is altogether other. We cannot fathom such a Being. He's the greatest Artist/Engineer/Scientist we can imagine. He made human beings from the dust, from molecules of elements found in nature (that He created). He didn't need to "make love" to create us; He is love itself and infinitely curious about us. I believe the reason He made so many people is that he never tires of watching us. He has infinite curiosity about each and every one of us. He watches our every thought, motivation and interaction. What is He watching for? I believe He's searching for people that have the potential to love Him. Just as we are searching for His heart, He's searching for ours.

Another thing that distinguishes our relationship with God from others is that He completely knows us. Imagine sitting on table, waiting for a doctor to come in. A doctor comes in, greets you, and proceeds to tell you that he already knows your body down to the smallest chromosome. He also knows what's happening in all your internal organs without hearing any of your symptoms. He has already given you a diagnosis and called your prescription into your pharmacy. He knows your complete history without having to ask. Not only that, he knows all the thoughts in your head, every thought you've ever had and ever will have for the rest of life. He comforts you and assures you that your worries are perfectly normal and addresses your fears with full explanation, all without you having to say a word. This would be the shortest doctor's visit on the face of the earth! This is how much God knows us. This presents a type of intimacy that goes even deeper than we have with our own selves. It can be hard to love God at times because He's closer to us than we are to ourselves. Just as we can sometimes hate ourselves without even realizing it, we can also hate God without realizing it. We sometimes hate what is most familiar to us. I believe this isn't really hate, but anger and frustration at not understanding our life situation. If we are willing to acknowledge it, in the deepest part of ourselves we know who God is. We have always known who God is. He's in our subconscious mind. We may try to forget Him and put him out of our minds but He's always there, trying to break through and have us remember Him. Like a distant dream, we remember Him in bits and pieces. It seems so strange and surreal when we encounter God. In the Garden of Eden, on that fateful day when the fall of man happened, the awareness of the presence of God got severed from our conscious minds. It became repressed into our subconscious minds. God is trying to break through in this world to a people who have literally forgotten him. His challenge is not so much trying to break through the physical world as it is to break through our conscious minds.

He's looking for people who will remember Him, love Him, and be honest with him. Just as we have to be honest with ourselves, we must be honest with God. In our deepest core we know what is real. We need to take that deepest hurt and pain and embrace it. Just as our relationship with God has been severed, so has our relationship with our emotions. We are very much out of touch with how we feel. We think surface feelings are our true feelings and our circumstances are the cause of these feelings. We don't acknowledge there are deeper feelings that lie at the core. After the fall something  happened inside each of us that wouldn't allow us to be fully content on this earth. Each of us have our own cross to bear. This cross can lead us back to God. No person on earth can understand this cross better than the one who already bore it for each of us, God Himself.

Sin and separation from God cause us to be frustrated and angry. In the Psalms we see David getting angry and frustrated with God over and over again. David was called "a man after God's own heart". God loves when people express real and raw emotions because it means they are being honest. God feels very strong emotions and encourages us to do the same. We are made in His image and we are made to be like Him. He doesn't mind us getting angry with Him. In fact, I believe He encourages it. He understands that living in a fallen world we are going to get angry. If we don't get angry, that means we're stuffing our feelings. We can be angry without letting it lead to harmful behavior. In fact, if we stuff our feelings that will lead to explosive harmful behavior. We need to be honest more than anything- with God and others.

The beauty of creation is another thing that can lead us closer to God. The world may be fallen, but it still contains much beauty. I can't fathom how beautiful it must have been before the fall. I once had an experience in nature that sent shivers down my spine. This was at a time when I was just beginning to search for God's heart. I was sitting on a rooftop, staring straight ahead. The sky in front of me was dark. That's how I felt in my life at the time, dark and bleak. Then something inside told me to turn my head. I turned my head and then saw the most beautiful and most brilliant pink, orange and gold sunset I've ever seen. I knew God was speaking to me through it. It was like He was saying: "This is for you." It was then that I knew it wasn't over for me yet. There was still beauty to be found in this world. I knew there was more to life, a world of mystery yet to be uncovered. In Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl points out the men in the concentration camp embraced beauty in nature as one of their sole sources of happiness. They felt it was one of the only things that couldn't be taken away from them.

Psalm 46:10
"Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth!"

God: more than a parent, a part of ourselves, our deepest friend, our deepest companion, more than a spouse. We can just be still, and know in the deepest part of ourselves...He is God.