Subject:  SJ: Living with God |
Author:
Eugene
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Date Posted: 23:13:28 01/25/03 Sat
So this one Sunday, I was feeling really lost. I didn't think that I know God, and so I was caught in a dilemma: Should I go to church even though I wasn't sure if things would be different this time -- that somehow I would experiencing intimacy with God there? Or should I not go to church and admit to myself that I had been a lost cause?
That morning, I happened to be reading a passage from Nouwen's book, "The Inner Voice of Love". Within the passage is this statement, "The greatest challenge here is faithfulness, which must be lived in the choices of every moment. When your eating, drinking, working, playing, speaking, or writing is no longer for the glory of God, you should stop it immediately, because when you no longer live for the glory of God, you begin living for your own glory. Then you separate yourself from God and do yourself harm."
So the first decision I made was to not go to church that morning. I wouldn't have gone to church for the glory of God; I would have just prevented people from feeling that I was "falling away from faith". On the other hand, I decided to not do anything, even mundane things like eating and drinking, unless I felt that God would have specifically do it with me.
I did not want to just stay home, and so I started to head towards my father's grave site. It was a place I go whenever I felt I was in a place of hurt. Somehow I wanted my father to comfort me. But on that day, at the last moment of turning off the freeway, I sensed that it would have been a meaningless errand. My dad didn't live there! When he is no longer limited by time and space, he is everywhere I am. If I could not sense that any place else, I would not sense that at the grave site!
For some reason I decided to drive on to Pomona, to where I went to college. I hadn't been back on campus for ages. It was a strange experience. It was like God was dropping hints that He was here, there and everywhere. The old place where I used to go for a haircut was turned into the office for campus ministries. I was seeing flyers for campus fellowship all over the place. I went into the library and the spot I used to hide and chat with my friends was now the stack for books on Christian faith and religion -- a library that was full of engineering and science books and I had to end up in that one place....
I plopped down on the lawn and said to God, "Okay, I guess You've made your point. There is no place on earth I can go that you are not right there with me. Maybe I just had my blinders on, but how do I just know and believe that You are with me?" Just then a breeze touched my face, and I remembered....
When I was still a student -- and not yet a Christian, one day I came out of a midterm exam in a really depressed mood. I plopped myself down on the lawn and shut my eyes, feeling really sorry for myself. Then a very gentle breeze brushed against my cheek, and suddenly I entertained the idea that, "What if there is a God and I was feeling His gentle breath -- because He was so close to me and wanting to tell me everything's gonna be all right." I just got this strange warm feeling towards God, and at least for a moment I recognized that He must be the most gentle being, that even His comforting touch was so subtly, almost timidly gentle.
So I know God after all. I just "forgot about my first love" while I got wrapped up in my own little ministry projects.
God has chosen to reveal Himself to us. And we have to put on some pretty heavy duty eye patches (by being obsessed with ourselves) to not see Him.
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