Monday, May 23, 2011

How big is your God?

Recently I found out that my friend and his wife have been trying some time now to have children, but the diagnosis they've been given is that they have infertility issues. Hearing that started the waterworks (yes I am a guy who cries from time to time) and it got me to thinking; should I get angry at God for this or should I pray about it?

So I've started praying for my friend and his wife today, my prayer is that if it is God's will that the wife gets pregnant. I don't have a problem praying for this and yet I know there might be some followers of Christ who give me flak; if she's already been given a diagnosis of infertility, why pray for that?

Here's the thing to skeptics, Christians and others; God is bigger than you can imagine if you don't contain him (but even then he is bigger still).

This:

Used to be the box I contained God in; it's where the safe, the comfortable, the easygoing, the "family friendly" and whatever I couldn't take care of on my own. He was in here because I put him in here.

But as I've put God back in his rightful place he's bigger than I could ever had imagined when he was wrapped up in a nice and tidy box...

Thing is, God is everywhere and there have been times where I feel his presence where some people dare not go to. I felt God's presence at the Gay Pride Parade in Chicago as my friends and I took time to say I'm Sorry to the individuals around us letting them know that there's a place for you in the church and that God loves them and so do we.
I sense God's presence when I'm involved with interfaith activities where I'm dialoguing with Muslims, Jews, Christians, Ba'Hai, etc.
God is in our midst and yet it is easy to make him manageable and compact.

Then there's this scenario with how we treat God:

God is Mr. Potato Head and we give him the accessories to make him more like us. God is transcendent from our standards and we cannot place our wills upon him.
I like what Anne Lamott said; "You can tell you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do". It's a reason why Fred Phelps and the people who make up Westboro Baptist Church get to me, they have made God out to be this LGBT hating, soldier hating, actor hating God of hate who absolutely despises EVERYTHING...except for the members of Westboro Baptist Church!
The God they've made for themselves is really small, and if my concept of God doesn't convict me to love them than my God is pretty small too.

So if God is in fact a God I can't contain, a God who is larger than I can imagine it means that THAT God can handle and if it is his will to answer my prayer because it is only BIG to me.

That is how BIG my God is.

~Nathanael~

No comments: