Thinking of God

An old teacher was speaking to pastors and said, “When you speak of heaven your eyes should be bright and you should smile and your face should reflect the joy of God. When you speak of other things, well, your normal face will do.”

Thinking of God the Joyful Healer, is a healing habit.

But that’s not the whole story is it? Many people struggle with images of God that are destructive or at least distracting.

In our images of God it is good to check: Is God always male? Is God old, or distant or angry, or irrelevant and passive? Or worse, are we just plain sure we have it figured out and have no mystery in our sense of God?

The truth is that some images of God are far from true to Jewish and Christian historical wisdom. Jesus said “God is spirit”, and this suggests that we are not headed in a constructive direction when we try to limit God to our personal conception. Many scholars believe that the Muslim practice of praying the “99 names of God”, in which the believer reviews many facets of God’s nature, was learned from either Christian or Jewish believers in the Middle East at the time of Muhammad. Well, that is sure not a current practice in some churches where Christian images are limited to “God”, “Father”, “Lord”, and “Jesus”. I find it interesting that in those forms of spirituality, many pray the names of God in almost compulsively repetitious fashion, as in “Father God, Father, Lord Jesus, we ask you, Lord God, to …”, as if the believer is stuck like a CD player.

Jesus is only quoted for a brief bit of his life, and only in a few of his messages in the Bible, yet he exhibits an explosion of freeing images of God. God is male in some and female in others (like the woman sweeping her house). God is anthropomorphic in some and even earthier in others (like the mother hen gathering her chicks). In just one of Jesus’ parables God is pictured as running to meet us, kissing and hugging, and singing and dancing in joy over us!

And Jesus endemically refers to God’s relation to the creation as one of intimacy and tender, thoughtful presence.

Let yourself go! God is not limited to our conceptions or our understanding. Great saints in the early church pointed out that that while God is beyond our thinking; we do well to think of the ways God chooses to come and be exposed to us. God mothers us and fathers us, God is a friend and lover, God wrestles with us and sings in us, God accompanies us and cherishes our every breath. God is wild in the creating business and loves our creativity and honors it.

God loves every moment we move in the ways of healing and justice. The church I pastor is actually called The United Methodist Church of the Joyful Healer!

Don’t Lie to Yourself: Sometimes when people hear you speak of faith or church or God, they filter you through their seriously damaged images of God. Be compassionate enough to understand their reservations and even sometimes their outright hostility. But listen for where the hurt is. It can make you able to communicate at an altogether different level.

And God is right here, right now. Filling the space you live in and your heart as well. Receive your blessing.

Do well.