God in You
Mystic theologian Howard Thurman (1899–1981) describes the freedom each of us possess to experience the divine:
The claim of the mystic is, at last, that you don’t need anything to bring you to God. You don’t need a mediator. You don’t need an institution. You don’t need a ceremony or a ritual. God is in me, and the ladder from the earth to sky is available. So, I can ascend my own altar stairs wherever I am, under any circumstances, and the key to the understanding of the experience, and to the experience itself, is never in the hands of any other human being.
When I love people, then I find God in me. Whether I bow my knee at any altar doesn’t make any difference, the God in me begins to move up through the corridors of my mind and my emotions … and moves out from me and broods over you….
If you love somebody, you never give that person up. Isn’t it interesting how Jesus always insisted upon this, and how completely we have missed it in our doctrine? Nothing that I can do can kill the God in me. Nothing. Nothing. Since I can’t destroy it, perhaps if I listen, if I can become still enough, I will hear it whisper to me the precise word I need to take away so much of my unhappiness and my misery and my pessimism about the nature of life and the meaning of my own life. If I can be still so that the God in me can get on the march, I don’t need any priest, I don’t need any preacher, I don’t even need any church. All these will help perhaps, but I don’t need them. At last God is in me, and if I find God in me, when I come to church, I’ll find God in the church. The burden of proof at last is on the vitality of my own awareness. [1]
James Finley turns to the mystics as teachers who reveal how to abide in God’s love.
Mystics are men and women, who, through mystical experiences are touched by the realization that down in the deep-down depths of things, God is welling up and giving Herself away in and as every breath and heartbeat. They taste that oneness, and in moments, when we taste that oneness, we’re like a momentary mystic. The mystics are teachers, because they bear witness that it’s possible to be habitually established in that oneness, instead of merely experiencing a little, momentary flash of it—God resting in us resting in God.
In the mystical experience, the depths of God, by the generosity of God, have been given to me as the depths of myself. That experience of oneness is God’s infinite identification with me—with God’s own life—in my nothingness without God. Love is never imposed, it’s always offered, so once I’ve tasted that spiritual experience, then I have to freely give myself to the love that gives itself to me. In the reciprocity of love, then destiny is fulfilled. That’s the real story of our lives—where we are in the reciprocity of love. [2]
| The Idol of Mission: The Shadow Side of Service |
 Click Here for AudioThe Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the most beloved and well-known stories in the Bible. We often focus on the son who left his father to selfishly pursue his desires, but it’s critical to remember that Jesus was telling the story to a group of Pharisees—religious leaders who would have identified much more with the older son in the parable. This older, obedient son refused to celebrate when his rebellious younger brother came home. When the father begged the older son to join the party, the son was furious.“Look, all these years I have served you,” he said, “and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!” Many people sympathize with the older son. His anger seemed justifiable. Why should the disobedient son get a party while the obedient son gets nothing? But we must look more closely. Notice where the older son roots his significance: “All these years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command.” The older son obeyed, and for his obedience, he expected a reward. This attitude of entitlement is often linked to the Idol of Mission. It’s the view that I deserve a reward for my hard work.In this way, the older son is not that different from the younger son. Neither boy was particularly interested in a relationship with the father. Instead, both were focused on what they might get from him. Both felt entitled and demanded the fulfillment of their desires. The younger son simply took what he desired, and the older son, being a more patient and self-disciplined person, worked for it. Jesus told this story at a gathering of very devoted religious people who drew a great deal of significance from their obedience to God. They were men devoted to the false god of mission. Was Jesus saying there is something wrong with serving God or faithful obedience? Of course not. The problem comes when we find our significance and worth in it.In the parable, Jesus was not diminishing the older son’s service, just as he was not endorsing the younger son’s sinfulness. Rather, he was showing that pouring our lives into activities, even godly ones, is not the center of the Christian life—God is. And what our heavenly Father desires most from us is not our service but our presence. DAILY SCRIPTURE JOHN 5:39–40 LUKE 15:11–32 WEEKLY PRAYER Ignatius Loyola (1495–1556) Lord Jesus Christ, fill us, we pray, with your light and life, that we may reveal your wondrous glory. Grant that your love may so fill our lives that we may count nothing too small to do for you, nothing too much to give and nothing too hard to bear. Amen. |
