The Comma

I say it to our kids all the time:  your understanding of God and your relationship with God has to “die” again and again in your life in order for you to make room for a new relationship with God and new understanding of who God is. 

The problem is most of us get stuck.  We get stuck often somewhere in our early adolescence when something bad happens, something hard and unfair happens.  And it doesn’t fit with our “childhood” understanding of who God is and how God works. 

For those of us who I’d say are fortunate, we had a relationship with God that was a lot like a relationship with a loving parent.  We were in need and our needs were met.  We were hurting and we were comforted.  We were lost and we were found. 

And what happens when something bad happens and the hurt isn’t taken away?  What happens when we first experience the death of a loved one or favorite pet?   It isn’t fair.  It isn’t right.  And where was that God as Perfect Parent to come and save us – to keep us from this hurt?   At times like this – and they happen again and again in our lives as we mature – we need to “die” to understandings of God so that the new that is always God can be born in us. 

I can only speak of my own experience.  I have and have had a central, vital, deep, long and CHANGING relationship with God.  A CHANGING understanding of who God is and how I am to be in relationship with God.  There are constants for me – like love –  a presence, knowing of love.  Like forgiveness.  Like relationship.  But HOW I have been in relationship to that which is God and HOW I experience God working in my life and life as I know it has changed and I know will continue to change.  For it is what happens in any of the good, grounding relationships in our lives.  They change.  They grow.  As we change and we grow.  What we need changes.  What the other needs changes.  How we are in relationship change.  And that is a good thing.  But it first is often a hard thing.  It is hard for relationships to change for it feels like they have died.  Something about what was has died.  And something new is waiting to be born. 

I hope for this new generation what I hope for all of us – that we will not get stuck.  That we will risk being part of a growing, deepening, changing relationship with God.   That when we run right up against an understanding that doesn’t work any more, a way of relating that doesn’t fit us anymore, we won’t throw away the relationship with God – with church – with faith – with spirituality – with Jesus – but use this as an opportunity to “die”.  To let go.  To make room.  Listening, hoping room for a new way of relationship and understanding to be made.  To share these times of ending and new beginning with each other.  To seek accompaniment and support from others who know this way – at church, spiritual directors, loved ones.  To walk through the unknowing into the new knowing.  To dare to believe that God is still speaking, still calling, still seeking us out in the always forever NEW that is God.