What if…?

I remember thinking, “Oh, God is boring.”

I remember thinking, “God must not exist.”

I remember thinking, “If God does exist, why …?”

What if God really was everything we could expect a “God” to be, and more? What if there were answers to our questions, comfort for our sorrows, and strength waiting for us to pick up and put to use? What if a give-and-take with God was not only attractive, exciting, and anything but boring, but challenging and transformative? What if a daily walk with God was as close, as substantive, as intimate as each of us wanted it to be?

Give God the benefit of the doubt this year. How could you come up with something better than God already is? If you can love as much, be willing to sacrifice as much, ponder as deeply, question as shrewdly, and want more, how could the Being that made You BE anything less?

According to Richard Rohr, there are two things with enough power to shake us enough out of our fears, our doubts, our judgmental, divisive, I-already-know-God ruts: wonder and suffering. Suffering pushed me into God, and what I saw led me to start writing when I was 11, and I haven’t stopped. I can’t. God is that good, and that impossible to turn from. And what can happen within you is simply incredible.

Make a resolution to reconsider what you think you know of God. You and the part of the world you inhabit will not be the same. This is how God’s Kingdom comes.

Join me to ponder, here and on Youtube.

Reflection

What is my relationship with God like? What would I like it to be?

Prayer

Dear God, have I put parameters on You? Have I allowed my perception, shaped by so many outside forces, become stale, boring? Or, am I mad at You, an anger I haven’t brought to You to express for fear You won’t answer? Shake me, Lord! May I seek You! May I rush at You! May I use my suffering and that of others not to cause doubt, fear, and anger but question, question I can bring to You and engage. Here I am, Lord. Let’s begin. Amen.