For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
This is a section that we repeat in our tradition’s Morning Prayer, weekly. My thoughts are not God’s thoughts. I frequently find myself thinking about God, thinking about prayer, thinking about my neighbor. There’s a problem with this, though. I cannot think like God thinks. Not only that, God is so immense and everything, I cannot accurately think about God. Any construct I have for God is woefully inadequate.
If God creates all things, loves all things and is all things, how can I possibly think about that. God is creating my thinking. Now we’re back to the clay and the potter. The clay can’t possibly will itself into a pot, or think its way to a specific kind of pot. Every notion the clay has is lacking. Every notion I have about God is lacking. Yes, I can think about prayer and my neighbor, but I need to be careful to remember that my thinking about something does not make it True or accurate. It’s just my thinking.
I spend a lot of time in my head, so thinking is something I’d be hard-pressed to turn off. Perhaps I can get closer to thinking about God if I take in everything around me that is of God. The flowers, trees, churches, babies, orphans. The addicts, hungry, homeless, widows. The beautiful and the painful. All of this is of God. And within me, God is love. God is all of that, conflicted and complex. If I were to truly think about all that God is, and all that God does, it actually would be very difficult to think about God. My simplistic notions are quickly disproven.
So if thinking about God is as hard as it is, how do I engage with God? I think I need to sit and love God. Loving doesn’t require logic, or sense, or even understanding. Loving just requires being in God’s presence, and.. being.
This morning, I’m thinking about how to move towards loving, and away from thinking.
No comments:
Post a Comment