What does your
relationship with God look like?
We understand God
to have been, from the beginning of time, relational. As Psalm 33 reminds us, even in Creation, God
was also Word and Spirit: By the word of the Lord the heavens were
made; by the breath of his mouth all their host. Moreover, we too are called to relationship
with God in the psalm, hoping for his
kindness, waiting for the Lord, trusting that God is present to us in our
every moment. Moses reminds the people
of this relationship in Deuteronomy: Did a people ever hear the voice of God
speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live? Yet, while God does not need our promise in
relationship, God would like our participation, and so Moses tells the people
that they must keep God’s statutes and commandments as a way of fixing in their hearts that the Lord is God. This is how God gives identity to his
people: they are called by God who has
ongoing care for them and who will keep his promises.
Jesus will insist
on this relationship in new ways at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, after the
Resurrection: I am with you always, until the end of the age, he tells his
disciples. And, because he will dwell in
them in the form of the Spirit, they are to go out, aware of that presence
within, and draw others in to comprehension and awareness of all God is doing
in this world: 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. This is participation in the relationship
Jesus comes to embody, to give body to.
We are called
through baptism and death and resurrection to union with God. Having, as Paul tells the Romans, received a Spirit of adoption, we are children of God, and can now call God Abba, Father! If we are one with the Spirit God gave to us,
we are children, blessed into a relationship of intimacy, of union with God in
all God’s persons, not falling back into
fear, but relying on God’s love, fixed
in our hearts, God, who is present to us – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – in every moment, as he promised.
This post is based
on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordle.net
No comments:
Post a Comment