Tuesday in the Fifth Week

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 102:15-22; John 8:21-30

Poor God.  This God creates us and designs us for relationship, but we keep making it hard.  It’s not the complaining that makes it hard; it’s the stories we tell about who God is that keep us from relating deeply and honestly.

When I see people in spiritual direction, I often learn that they are angry with God.  They’re frustrated or hurt or disappointed about something that they think God should have prevented, or made happen otherwise.  But when i ask them, “Have you told God you’re angry?” they’re horrified.  “No, I couldn’t do that!”  As we talk, it turns out that they have learned the lesson of the first reading: if you complain, God will harm you.  Like a dangerous parent, God’s ego must be protected at all costs.  Only the “saints” can intervene and talk God into mercy or compassion.

We make God in our image; then our God makes us in that image.  We project onto God our fears as well as our dreams.  If our parents raised us not to ask questions or complain, it’s easy to think that God will reject us as well.  But God is not looking to reject us (in spite of what John has Jesus say today).  God is looking for relationship.  Part of that is honest emotion.

Now, there is a kind of complaint that ends relationship.  When I come to you as though I’m entitled, when I treat you as my servant, I’m distorting our relationship as much as if I treat you as my master.  If I go to God and demand that God change the world to suit me, then I’m not asking for relationship.  The two sides are one coin.  

Relationship is about honest struggle.  It includes a willingness to listen, to heed the other, but it also requires honest expression of my needs and fears.  Many of my most powerful encounters with God have involved me yelling or sobbing.  God does not necessarily change the situation, but God does surround and comfort me.  God gives me the strength to look at the source of my hurt, and so to be healed.

May you be healed by the deep love of God today, as you dare the relationship you crave.