On Finding God...

For over 40 years, I have had an awareness of God. Correlate to what Jesus said about "becoming like little children" I wonder if our best perceptions of God are when we are small, innocent and naive? For even as we grow older, we project more and more of either ourself, our selfish interests or personal experiences on who God may really be.

God is the greatest mystery any human may pursue. The more I think I "learn" about God, the more I realize just how little I really understand. At best, most people only grasp at "pieces" of God... Sometimes in ignorant bliss, sometimes with calculated intention. The latter appear to do so like selective shoppers in a spiritual supermarket. Finding a bargain in the salvation aisle, they'll scoop up a few bags of majestic love, amazing grace and matchless mercy. But when they see the price of items like His righteous anger, just wrath and perfect judgment, they may choose to simply go without for a while, hoping the prices will drop in the future. But God is so much bigger than being restricted to selective options buying. If we choose to find God, we must be prepared to invest in the whole storehouse of His Being. Buying into the whole of God requires significant adjustments to our "need to know" mentalities.

While there is certain virtue in being "childlike" before God, it appears many spiritually intended folks never allow their concept of God to mature much beyond childish conceptualizations. J.B. Phillips, an Anglican writer from the mid-20th century wrote to this point. In his book, Your God Is Too Small, he suggests that most adults cling to "the conception of God that exists in the mind of a child of Sunday-school age." Phillips observations are inditing even to this day.

What is your present image of God? Some perceive God as a loving and caring father figure, always supportive, benevolent and always "there" for you. Fortunately for those, their experiences with "earthly father" strongly mirror those concepts of Heavenly Father. But for others, those whose earthly father was absentee during the formative years of life, or worse yet abusive, are hard-pressed to find such a figure even amid the divine attributes ascribed publically to God the Father. Some fathers are only and always abusive, dangerous and to be earnestly avoided. What does one do when earthly experience challenges the veracity of Heavenly Father?

How do we "find" an accurate understanding? Is God a "spiritual beat cop" ready to punish the slightest infraction of the law? Is God a surrogate or substitutionary parent intent on being everything our earthly parents were not? Is God that "Old Man in the sky" that satirists seek to shamelessly lampoon? Who is God and how may we find Him?

Perhaps we begin by opening the view of our own lens. Many well intended seekers of the Divine settled on a particular view of God some years ago and, frankly, just stayed there. Peacefully, quietly, comfortably content in letting God remain the God of their childhood Bible class. God became "everything we ever needed Him to be" and we simply ceased to venture any further into the mysterious Unknown.

If God is anything, He is "mysterious." Not to be formulated, calculated or measured. He is the only true God... of wonder, beyond all comprehension... fully awesome... ceaselessly spiritually intoxicating. If God is anything, He is to be experienced and encountered. If we are to "find" God, we will have to allow our mourings to be cut, letting go of all the "familiar" conceptualizations we've used to corral God and let Him reveal Himself to us as we move at His mercy and grace. On our part, we're going to have to quit answering for God and begin listening to Him speak. We are going to have to allow our view of God to be determined by His revelation, rather than merely by what we think we know about Him.

As one who had his previous "mourings" cut, a famous Christian orator knew of which we speak when he said, "From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being..." (Acts. 17:26-28)

God is to be found. But to do so, we must be willing to let go of what we have "known" and allow the mystery of the Divine, to once again carry us away as in the mind of a child... but with the heart of a mature seeker, not a picky shopper. Our God is to be found, He awaits us reaching...