Show me God!

Show me God!

How many of us can relate to that question?  If only I could see God, maybe I would understand why this happened in my life, or that happened in my life.  If only I could know that God was real, maybe I wouldn’t worry so much about what the future holds.  If only I could talk to God, maybe I could convince God that my life should become easier than it is.  If only I could show God how unfair my life has been, maybe God would fix it for me.  And so on.  The questions are never-ending and is a natural a part of being human.  We all have questions.

The Bible is full of stories of humans asking questions, from Eve saying ‘why shouldn’t I have a taste of an apple’ to the builders of the tower of Babel asking ‘why can’t we build all the way to where God lives so we can see for ourselves.  And the story of God creating ever more diversity.  Diversity of shapes, diversity of creatures, diversity of languages.

God could have just made a world full of butterflies and flowers.  Evolution could have stopped there.  We could have all had an easy life as a caterpillar.  Eat and eat and eat until we sleep, spin our cocoons, have a deep sleep of about a week or so and turn into something beautiful that can fly through the skies.  But the diversity was somehow an important part of the plan.

Peter and the disciples were unsure of whether there was a plan anymore.  They had lost their beloved leader and kept meeting in the same room time after time where they gathered to remember the night before he died.  They were stuck in that ‘remember when’ and ‘back in the good old days’ thinking. They were caught in a rut, only talking to each other and sharing the stories that were no longer new.  They felt tied up, constrained by the oppressive government and the religious system that Jesus had challenged and loved so much.  They were not expecting anything different.  They were in a cocoon time of their lives, wrestling with the old but not knowing what the new would bring.  They were no longer caterpillars, but they were certainly not butterflies yet.

Enter the Spirit!  It doesn’t want anyone to live their life in a rut of egotism or shame or guilt or arrogance.  It blows newness into the dustiest soul and shines light in the darkest corners of our minds and hearts. It calls out for us to take Jesus’ words seriously.

Jesus knew that his message of equality, justice and love was not easy for people to learn or hear or put into practise.  He knew that it would take a great deal of courage, commitment and honesty on the part of his followers to make his teachings more than just a conversation on a summer morning.  He knew that they thought of themselves as lowly caterpillars.  He could see that their grief would spin tight cocoons of fear and sadness and inadequacy around them.  He knew that they would need something more if they were ever going to fly.  They would be stuck in the past, afraid of the present and with no hope for the future.

Not unlike many of us who have tried new things again and again only to crash or see our hopes dashed or find our plans going awry until we too feel like we are in tight cocoons.  Someone said to me this week that the thought “I can do it myself” is a great predictor of failure.

We see that happening over and over.  In AA, the first step of recovery is to recognize when we can’t do it all by ourselves.  We hear stories of folks living with severe shame or guilt or depression or mental illness who are sure that reaching out for help is impossible for them to do.  They will go to the doctor if they have a broken leg, the dentist if they have a broken tooth, but they won’t do a thing if they have a broken heart or ill mind, obsessing on unhealthy thoughts, beating themselves up with negative thoughts of blame or resentment.  Some folks, and I have been there, treat themselves in downright bullying ways, yelling at themselves in ways that they would be ashamed to be caught doing to a child.  Why do we persist in treating ourselves in ways that we would never treat others?  And we get caught up in a tight web of our own making.

The spirit comes into our lives, sometimes like a flame, like a windstorm or like a gentle breeze.  We have the dramatic story in our scriptures, but John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, talked about his heart being strangely warmed one night in a small worship service.  And the spirit does not come into our lives just to release our cocoons or rescue us from our ruts, although that is great when it happens, but to transform our lives into joyful experiences that reach out to others.

If the Spirit had wanted Peter and the others to take over the Temple in Jerusalem, there would be no need for the different languages.  But the Spirit wanted them to reach out to the whole world.  The Spirit gave gifts that would break them out of their self-centered pity parties, and become ambassadors to a more beautiful vision of what the world could be like for everyone.

A world where all are treated with dignity and respect, a world where people living lives of pain could see hope for healing, where they wouldn’t feel ashamed for asking for help, and would get the help they needed.  A world where bullying was non-existant, where racism had come to and end, a world where we respect the beautiful diversity of God’s creation.  A world where we have all been transformed from lowly worms to beautiful flying butterflies able to ride the winds of change to co-create God’s heaven here on Earth.  May it be so for us all one day.