Prayer...

I am not sure how things happen. Does God do things? Does God allow things? That leaves me with either a vindictive (in most cases) or indifferent God - neither of which I'm fond of. It's OK to ask those questions, I think, but whether or not God did something is missing the point. God, it seems to me, created humans for companionship... relationship. I don't know why the creator of all things needs a relationship, but he certainly wants to. Otherwise, what is with all the Jesus stuff? It's at least obvious that humans are created for relationship with each other.

So, if we're created for relationship with one another, what makes us think that it's any different with God? Where did God say that he is unreachable? Where did God say that he cannot be communicated with unless we are perfect? In Genesis we see that God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden... why? To deliver a list of dos and do nots? Probably not. To chastise Adam for something? I doubt it. The Hebrew concept of "knowing" in the firs passages of Genesis is not that Adam gave intellectual ascent to the concept of his wife and analyzed her - that is our concept of knowing, inherited from the Greeks. Adam "knew" his wife and she had a child. Unless reproduction worked differently then, this was pretty experiential "knowing." Jackie calls it an experiential knowledge - "yada." We are created in the Image of God, and we are relational. How have we come to exclude God as relational to us?

I believe that our relationships - friend to friend, husbands and wives, parents and children - all reflect aspects of God's character. God has all these perspectives and more. This sounds trite and cliche-ish, but you get to know people by spending time with them and talking to them... you experience them. Would your husband or wife not want to know when something is bothering you? Would you not want to talk to him or her and spend time with her or him if you had a problem with her or his behavior or attitude?

Why is it any different with God?

Certainly God is not a man (or woman). But I think that in our effort to systematize and analyze and understand everything - even our Creator - that we've missed a large part of God. That is, that he wants to be with us.

Of course, this gets murky when we talk about the sickness or death of one we love. It's hard to say "I will be subjected to God" when someone close to me has suffered and died, with me praying for their healing all the while. I don't think that changes the truth, though. God will do what God wills. However, he welcomes the questions, the cries, the screams. Did God give my pastor's wife (whom everyone loved, and who made a direct impact on my life, and for whom everyone prayed for) cancer? Did he allow her to get cancer twice, beat it twice, and then succumb the third time? I hope not, because I'm not interested in that God, and I want nothing to do with him. Ultimately, I don't know. What I do know, though, is that she died. I also know that in those times of grief and frustration and downright anger, God comes alongside us. He is not afraid of the anger. He is not afraid of the cursing. He is not afraid of the questions.

Job despaired for his very life, and cursed his mother's womb. He challenged God for a face-off. His friends gave him the conventional wisdom... "You must have some sin hidden somewhere." And Job maintained his innocence. Job takes every bit of his anger, his pain, his frustration, his loss, to God and basically tells God to just kill him. Of course, Job also gets a thundering response, too, and even a rebuke. But in the end, God says that Job did not sin in his questioning, his despair... I think that says a lot more than the prayer of Jabez.

What do you think?