As it seemed to work OK last week publishing a long article in 5 daily posts, I thought I’d do the same this week – but even then, the chunks are pretty long! I thought I’d post a daily prayer alongside each one – at least they’re shorter!
Encountering God
Part 1
Dearest Lord, how may I know you? You who are so beyond me, so unlike me? Yet in your gracious love you draw close to me and make yourself known. I call on you now please to draw very close to me, into my inmost heart and mind that I may know you and love you. Amen
Meeting God is a peculiar thing. Lots of people say they have met him, and recommend that you would be glad if you met him too. And a lot of people are very open to this suggestion. They would love to believe in God, and all it needs is a bit of incontrovertible proof. Just a tiny bit – that’s all it would need. And that’s precisely what there isn’t any of. If only discovering God for yourself was like discovering Mt Everest for yourself. People could tell us about the mountain; we’d realise that we’d like to climb it – and then we start totting up the difficulties. It’s a long way away; it’s very difficult to climb; you need to get yourself very fit and join up with an expedition that requires a lot of time and money and commitment. But that’s all OK: you want to climb Everest and you can get there, and you climb it, and you think: “Wow, here I am. They told me Everest exists and that it’s magnificent, and that when I get to the top it will be a supremely fulfilling experience – and they were right”. Job done!
In this analogy, we see that some people might decide it wasn’t worth the effort – they have enough good things in their life, and they can manage without seeing Everest for themselves. Some might go but fail in their first couple attempts at climbing it and conclude they’re not up to it – it’s disappointing, but, again, life has other joys and so, ultimately, it’s no great loss. But knowing the reality of God, and experiencing it for yourself, are not like this. This is why I began with a prayer. Encountering God begins with us reaching out before we know for sure that he is real. This is risky. What if we reach out our hand to God and nothing happens? We are going to feel so stupid! Of course, this means that meeting with God is an act of faith – we have to step out to meet him before we are sure that he is really there. Damn! If only we could have some objective proof that he is real, then many of us would be prepared to put in immense effort to find him. But we don’t want to waste our life on a wild goose chase. There is not the fear of being rebuffed, which sometimes holds us back from reaching out to another person to say we like them, because everyone who does meet God says that he welcomes them. However, people understand that living your life with God is a big thing: he will want changes in your life. As he is the be all and end all, we really ought to be transforming our lives so that everything is in tune with him. We really don’t want to go to all that trouble if it’s not really true.
Spiritual Devotion 