Poet John Donne intoned: “No man is an island.” Even the staunchest individualist wouldn’t really enjoy being shipwrecked alone or condemned to a solitary existence. Humans are essentially social creatures.
Unlike us, God doesn’t need society for survival. God could have chosen to be God all alone. Instead, the Lord chose to create us, and to be the God who abides with us – Immanuel – literally “God-with-us” in Hebrew. The underlying message of the whole Bible is that God desires to be in relationship with us and to have us be in relationship with each other.
Relationships are two-way streets. If I’m in a relationship with you, I learn about myself through your eyes at the same time I’m getting to know you. It’s a pretty efficient way to expand my awareness and understanding.
No wonder the world opens up to our perceptions when we take our relationship with God seriously. Not only does the Lord guide us into greater self-knowledge, but we also get to know more about our Maker and the divine perspective – including our fellow humans!
Of course, like everything else that matters, this multi-pronged education evolves over time. In that vein, perhaps the most helpful image the Bible offers to describe this process is to name God our Parent.
When I had my fourth child, I had the good fortune to take, and eventually teach, a parenting class offered at my kids’ nursery school. One of my takeaways from that time was how much my experience of being a parent was teaching me about God and the way the Lord loves us as a mother and father. Over the next several weeks, I plan to share some of my insights here.
But let’s begin with this. Most parents’ react to the birth of their child with an array of positive emotions: wonder, humility, and intense love – a true bombardment of joy, which I described last week as a marker of holiness. The parents know nothing about their child yet feel an instantaneous sense of belonging.
In fact, whether as a parent or not, making a connection with a child, or a pet, becomes a universal human experience of “unexplainable” love. Here we catch our first glimmer of how much God loves us.
What a good way to begin a relationship!
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