John 15, 16 and 17
H,
There is a certain loneliness to living in God. It is an individual climb but the discipline is in the way it connects to others. But that is another story. I want to talk about what the feeling of being disconnected from that intimacy with God brings. After the fillip of the early days of yore, the mood settles into a kind of dance-less step. Even if we had the best theology guiding us, and we never do, there is a certain “hole in the soul” that comes with finally taking a stand in the celestial battle for humanity and being. The more we get into it the more we realize how no one else is. Not with that particular hint and shade of God that seems not quite in sync with all the funk in our temples of worship. He is an all sufficient God because He is able to take in all comers and stretch glory and grace to all sorts and all places on our collective and individual journeys. He has given us different gifts and different callings and a guiding light that unites us all but He has not made us all the same and He does not seem to want that.
I think the first problem is that we try and make each other the same. We mistake equality of substance with uniformity of shape. We think to “lead” or “preach” is a sign of hierarchy when God really means it as an assign of responsibility. So we have countless people struggling to fit into roles before they have even given themselves over to the slow dearth of self and the loving embrace of not striving to prove yourself to the creator of the universe. We create loneliness because people are not free to be who they are and then they act and pretend and cannot share their flawed clay pot self with anyone. The church is poorer for it. The individual is poorer for it. She cannot address her God with any certainty. He cannot connect to people or to purpose. We have a soulless thing masquerading as the movement of truth and so nothing gets done as it should be done.
The second thing is more fatal and leads to the first. It is feeling that after the high of conversion we are now left to our devices. It is the reason the disciples fled from Christ’s side at the crucial moment. They had always been in danger as they travelled with the rabble rouser. It was not new to have henchmen in the crowd. The difference was that He was ready. It was His time. He had told them so. They ran because He was leaving and the safety of His words and works was going to be no longer available. Peter made one last attempt but after that he denied the Christ flat and not once but thrice. They hid until He came to them resurrected. And then they did nothing until Pentecost. You see what I am getting at, H? We feel the same abandonment after we experience God. We feel the epoch but life is not lived there. We still have to face the day to day. Like them, we are discouraged by a lack of the presence. Like them, we are enflamed by Pentecost. Unlike them, because they did not look back, we do not yet know that the Holy Spirit comes to be intimate and not loud.
When Christ said I am sending you the companion, the friend and the comforter, He meant all that and more. This guide would lead us to the whole truth. I am not talking about speaking in tongues. I am talking about living in the spirit. I am speaking of believing that the essence of God now has a seat in our hearts and is talking to us every day. This is how we deal with the day to day. It is irrelevant what you believe about speaking in other tongues or not. If you have accepted Christ, the Holy Spirit lives inside you. It is as Clive Staples says, at first, merely a clue. It is right and wrong before it is truth and depth. It is a relationship that grows in intimacy and openness. Like all real relationships, there are no real short cuts. He has not time for doctrine or denominations, for theological debates or nonsense views about the nature of God. We see in part and prophesy in part but we have God’s whole spirit seeking intimacy with us in every crucial hour. And the hours are all crucial now, are they not?
We may want to spend some time with that comforter even now. He knows how much I need His help in all these places where I am dark. And everywhere else.
Tomorra.