The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. ~John 1:14
Awhile back I watched a movie featuring Helen Hunt, Mathew Broderick, and Colin Firth. Oh, and can't forget the delightful Bette Midler.
There is a really moving scene that I found myself relating to. My eyes grew moist and my heart filled with sorrow and pain at the memory of my own struggles to understand God. This stroll down memory lane had me revisiting my own conversations with our Wonderful Creator regarding his ways, his heart, and his love.
I will have to set the scene for you. In the movie Helen Hunt is a 39 year old wife who really wants a child. She and her husband finally conceive the day he leaves her. After a few weeks, she loses the child.
Eventually she has her natural mom played by Bette Midler pay for a fertility clinic. The scene opens with both women at the doctor's office where Helen is about to undergo artificial insemination. Bette asks her if she was going to pray? Helen responds with a no. This surprises Bette, not that she herself is an advocate for prayer, doesn't appear so, yet this is a very unusual omission on her daughter's part. She has often seen her pray over less significant things.
Bette then asks for a minute alone with her daughter and gets it. In a fight or flight syndrome Helen tries to leave. Bette continues to work on her resistance as she gently pushing her to reveal why she won't pray about one of the most important things in her life and something she so yearns for. I mean she prays over every bowl of spagetti yet she won't pray over this. And now here it comes...
Helen says, "Because I am not going to hand this wish over to some...whatever it is who is suppose to be loving who, who..."
She then starts to cry and her voice drops as if she's scared and ashamed to reveal the hidden contents within her heart. We can also do the same. Maybe we feel if we hide it in the dark and don't look it square in the face it will go away.
And so she continues in a whisper, "I thought God was good."
In response Bette says, "Maybe God is..."
As she paused Helen asks, "What?" with a desperate expectancy as if pleading, "Give me an answer to this madness."
Bette, "Difficult" pause "awful" pause "complicated".
With what appears to be a beam of enlightenment Helen replies, "Like me...I took the one man on Earth whose right for me and I dropped him on his head."
Bette, "Right, you did."
Doctor peaks his head through the door and asks, "How we doing?"
Bette, "We're done."
So Helen now equipped with a new perspective and the waves of healing begun says, "Wait," and she prays before the procedure. The prayer is in Hebrew, the language of her adopted parents.
Bette asks about the prayer, "What does that mean?"
Helen, "Hear of Israel. The Lord our God. The Lord is one."
Bette, "What does that mean?"
Helen, "Listen O Israel. The God of love and the God of fear are one."
I love that whole scene because whether or not we agree with all of it, to me it speaks about relationship. Not only relationship but my own struggles to understand God. God is a living being, to box Him into our own ideals of who He is, his ways, and our limited understanding of good and evil will limit Him to a script that will robs us of His very essence. God is a Spirit and like the wind one cannot capture Him and confine Him to our ideals. God is love and like an emotion one cannot fully experience Him unless one enters into Him. We can read about Him, people can describe Him for us, but unless our hearts are awakened to Him and his love we only have a second-hand experience that pales in significance to the real thing.
The essence of God lies beyond the limits of words into the deep recesses of his heart. God has invited us to get to know Him beyond the surface, to dive in and swim in Him, to taste Him and see that He is good. Deep calls unto deep and from the deep can we see and hear with His heart of love.
As with anyone else if one is to know God one must enter into a relationship with Him, yet not only enter in, but partake of His life. One with Him we will discover that the roaring Lion of Judah is also the gentle lamb of God. We will find that the one who shrouds Himself in darkness is also the one who leads us into his illuminous Light. We will find that the one who began our wisdom with fear is also the one who casts out fear in perfect love. A God with real emotions that quakes the Earth and levels mountains. Every phase of God is wonderfully held in his love.
Our efforts to simplify God can often have the opposite effect of complicating Him for relationship itself is complex unless the two are fused as one. The simplicity of God is found in intimate relationship with Him and partaking of his life. God has communicated that simplicity in His Son, Jesus Christ. He was made to be broken bread and poured out wine so that we can partake of his life and be fused together with the Divine, two as one. It was a mission that went way beyond displaying God to us into joining our lives with His where we can encounter and experience Him. The experience transcends the complex and simplifies it in love. The God life is no longer a mirage before us but a real, life-changing experience.
Here is where the severity of God and the love of God meet. Here is where the lion of Judah and the gentle lamb of God can be seen as one.
Isaiah 53:1-12
Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no beauty that we should desire Him.
He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.
He was taken from prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.
And they made His grave with the wicked—
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.
Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
He shall see the labor of His soul,and be satisfied
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.
