Ep343: Our Unseen God.
Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.
John says,
Whoever does not love their brother or sister
whom they have seen,
cannot love God,
whom they have not seen.
(1 Jn 4:20)
Our invisible God presents a problem for my prayers. I had hoped for years the problem would disappear as I grew in faith and matured in relationship with God.
But it didn’t work that way.
One of my favorite authors on prayer, Father Thomas Green, said that when he was young, he expected his faith would be firm and settled when he grew old.
But as he aged, he discovered that faith didn’t become easier–it attracted new difficulties.
My experience is like his. Having been dragged–kicking and screaming–into old age, faith is still a struggle. I’d like a rich harvest of settled insights and obvious decisions, but my faith is still a garden that needs watering and weeding and protection from frost and a fence against carrot-eating rabbits and cabbage-munching deer.
Not that my faith is of the carrots and cabbage variety. But the proofs of Christianity, so strong and convincing in my youth, are weaker now. The grand design of the universe used to reveal God’s greatness. Now it sometimes seems a muddle of incomprehensible dark matter and speed-of-light expansion, held loosely together by formulas I don’t understand.
Faith is a choice. A reasonable choice, given the other options, but still a choice. In prayer I often wait in darkness for the God I cannot see.
Dark matter exerts an unseen force in the universe, preventing it from spinning out of control. Faith is the dark matter of my spirit, holding my life in the life of God. It is the unseen gravity that keeps my life from spinning out of control.
As John who says,
Whoever does not love his brother
whom he has seen,
cannot love God,
whom he has not seen (1 Jn 4:20)..
The strongest apologetic for God is not rational proofs of his existence, but love among his disciples.
Let’s pray.
Our father, whom we do not see, you taught us to know you and love you by knowing and loving each other.
Jesus invited us into his circle of love, saying, “As the father has loved me, I have loved you” (Jn 15:9). And, “By this the world will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (Jn 13:35).
Deliver us from our obsession with rational explanations. Free us from the need to see and prove you. Liberate us from simple but false explanations of who we are and who you are.
There is a cloud of unknowing between you and us. As we face the darkness of that cloud, shine your light in our hearts. Give us grace to know you by faith, and to love others as you love us.
Amen.
I’m Daniel, on the channel “Pray with Me”.
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