Loading...How do you experience God in your life?
Comfort? Or the poke or prod that you need to get you going?
Creator?
Parent: either like a Father or Mother?
Sustainer?
Help?
Inspiration?
Strength or courage?
Reproof or censure?
Savior?
friend?
These are all metaphors and words – images and actions words – that we use to get at the mystery of God.
The metaphors are so useful
because they help us to put into words or concrete thought
what is abstract and beyond definition.
Yet, precisely because God is beyond definition,
the metaphors and words fall short
of a whole or complete description.
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How do you experience God in your life?
In outcomes,
in relationships,
in our own activity...
For example:
• creation is ongoing; God hasn’t stopped
• in our lives and loves, through good times and hard
• in the so-called “godforsaken” places, which really aren’t forsaken by God!
• in our community and congregation
• in one another
• God even shows up in our doubts and our questions.
So, how do we reflect God?
Besides our name: “Christian”,
which specifically points to Jesus the Christ,
how do we reflect the fullness of God – all three “persons”
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
How do our actions show our words and beliefs?
Why does a congregation like St. David’s exist?
To be a club?
To be an historical association?
To be a family?
Because, you know we do not exist just for ourselves!!
What is God calling us to do and be in this time and place?
Last weekend, 21 of us considered this question and spent some time in discernment with prayer, Bible study, questions, and listening. Thank you to all who participated!
Since then, I’ve put together other thoughts that have been swirling around.
One of the things that God definitely calls us to is to worship.
But, our answer also considers how we worship (or how come):
do we worship in order to have a mountain top, fulfilling experience?
Or, is worship the place to hear God’s invitation to love,
to be encouraged in our faith, and to be sent to teach and serve?
Or, as Matthew records for us,
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
God also invites us to learn (adult forum, Bible study, education).
Yet, we don’t learn so that we’ll win Bible Trivia contests!
We are invited to learn so that we can understand and hear God’s call that comes to us in a variety of ways. We learn about ourselves and about how God uses us in the world.
God challenges us wit the practice of stewardship:
Not to raise money for the church,
But to use all kinds of gifts (including, yes, money, but so many more)
to serve God’s people – creatively – everywhere.
God wants us to evangelize – to proclaim the Good News of Great Joy
Not so that we get more people into church and get them to give money,
But so that we invite people to know God’s unbounded love, forgiveness, justice, and hope.
God sends us, in the name of the Trinity, to share the love from God that changes lives that we know.
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What is God calling us to do and be in this time and place?
• To be in the every day places – where God is;
• To be in the valleys of grief and suffering, to share comfort and presence;
• To be in the hard places, even the hard places of our own hearts, to work with God’s grace;
• To let every person you encounter experience God’s acceptance;
• To bear witness to God’s on-going creative work—
• ...to God’s love which claims each of us –
• ...to God’s sustaining power to hold us up.
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Our God is, actually, mysteriously, much more than the Holy Trinity name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Our God is much more than all of the metaphors and names, and actions and images we have.
Our God is the mystery who claims us, loves us, nourishes us, and sends us into the world to live with our doubts and questions,
and with the faith that God –
Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier;
Father, Son, Holy Spirit;
Mother, Brother, Breath;
Parent, Friend, Encourager – always loves us.
Amen
