The Lord is here; his kingdom has come. (Part 8)

The Lord is here; his kingdom has come

Part 8: Our experience of God is of someone else, and God is wonderful beyond measure

It would be a nice, easy way out of many a dilemma if God was only an experience in my own mind. However, throughout this piece we have tried to be true to how people actually experience God. We have accepted the paradoxes and the unanswerable questions, rather than “tidying up loose ends” to make the whole thing easy to accept. So, Christians simply do not experience God as fully encompassed by themselves. Put simply, God is “out there”. He is an independent person over whom I have no control whatsoever. The crucial dimension is expressed in the experience of “meeting with God” or having “an encounter” with him. God is not me! I am nothing like God. To suggest that God is some sort of extrapolation of my best self or my fondest hopes is ridiculous when one considers the futile weakness of humankind compared to the awesome and glorious grace of God. God is someone else, and the experience of the presence of God is that of meeting with another person.

So, there is a table and chairs and a window looking onto the garden. In this setting, in which I might easily be engrossed in entirely secular matters such as reading the news or doing the ironing, from time to time I become aware that the Lord is with me. I have learnt over the years that the Lord is always with me, but I am not always aware of him. However, the moment I turn my attention to him then I become aware of “an additional presence” that was not there (to my attention) until I thought about him. I don’t mean to imply that I can “switch God on and off” whenever I wish – God is not me; he is someone else. So, sometimes I long to feel God’s presence but to me he appears to be absent – even though my firm faith conviction is that I am not alone. What I mean is that, very often, when I lift my attention from the mundane, I become aware of a sacredness that embraces me.

The expression of this presence varies according to what God wants to share with me, which will vary according to my need. However, there are common strands to what this presence feels like. Although there is just a table, chairs and a window, all of which are inanimate objects expressing nothing but their physical presence, as I become aware of God’s presence, I become aware that I am being held in an embrace of intense love. (If this is somehow a creation of my own mind, it is a simply astonishing achievement which I wish I could bottle and sell to others). I know that I love being alive, but the moment I think of God’s presence I am overwhelmed with the wonder of life. I feel blessed beyond measure. I am conscious that there is a forgiving, redeeming, healing, renewing person who is “my friend”, who is completely on my side, and who is constantly at work with all the power and love of God to make me whole.

Now if you say, “Aha, so what you really value is life, love, forgiveness, healing etc” and you are simply using God as a psychological vehicle to deliver these good things to yourself, then I reply that you do not understand at all. Perhaps an analogy is of being in love. When someone is in love it is not the sense of floating on air or bursting with joy that they love, it is the person that they love. If I try to “extract” “God’s good gifts” from the person of God, so that I can enjoy the gifts without “the baggage” of believing in the person of God, then I discover that all the gifts crumble into dust. I do not love, love; I love God, and as I become aware of his presence and of his love for me, then my response is to love him. The emphasis is on loving him as the person who fills my heart. Not simply loving him as the vehicle of the gifts that I really value.