What does intimacy
with God call us to?
As the people of
Israel return from exile, they are faced with a tremendous task: to rebuild
their home, a home laid waste by invaders in their absence. But God is there to comfort them. The prophet Isaiah paints a remarkable
picture of a maternal, caring God: as a mother comforts her child, so I will
comfort you – and that comfort is expressed in the image of a mother’s milk
nourishing the child she loves. There is
perhaps no more explicit passage about the relationship to which God invites
all of humankind, a relationship of love and of intimacy from a God whose
capacity to care for us is infinite. And
so our hearts are called to rejoice when we enter into that relationship,
recognizing our complete dependence on our generous and loving God. Let all
the earth cry out to God with joy, Psalm 66 exhorts us. If God has shared God’s self with us, made
God’s self known to us, what can we do but sing
praise to the name of God? Only when we have accepted an ongoing and very
real relationship with the Lord we can pray, knowing our prayer will not be refused.
The disciples will
likewise draw upon their relationship with Jesus as the Lord appoints and sends them ahead of him to every
town and place he intends to visit in Luke's Gospel. As
they travel, he is with them because his name
is with them; their relationship with Jesus allows them to do his work, to take
the Word of God to the world, inviting all to the relationship that is theirs. Paul similarly relies entirely upon his
relationship with the Lord, as well as on the cross – the consummate gift from
our caring God – as the unique route to salvation: May I
never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, Paul tells the
Galatians. Faith in Christ is necessary
and sufficient for salvation, though it may lead to persecution: Paul bears
the marks of Jesus on his body, marks
that demonstrate that he belongs to the Lord, is in intimate relationship with
Jesus, a new creation following a new
rule, the rule of the cross.
God works in and
through us, and so we are called to intimate relationship with God, knowing
that Jesus is with us as we proclaim the kingdom with our lives. We too must thus reach out to others with the
Word, caring for them, touching them with our lives, knowing that all we do is
God’s action in and through us. God’s infinite
capacity to care for us, as a mother
cares for her child, must translate
into our capacity to care for others, that all may be brought into the intimacy
of that relationship which will change the world.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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