The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [37]
This is not to say that God desires for us to suffer. Rather, when our defenses fall, our ultimate connection is revealed. Thus, vulnerability is another way in which we can experience our desire for God.
THESE EXPERIENCES, WHICH MANY of us have had—feelings of incompletion, common longings and connections, uncommon longings, exaltation, clarity, desires to follow, desires for holiness, and vulnerability—are all ways of becoming aware of our innate desire for God.
Anyone, at any time, in any of these ways, can become aware of his or her desire for God. Moreover, finding God and being found by God are the same, since those expressions of desire have God both as their source and goal.
Thus, the beginning of the path to God is trusting not only that these desires are placed within us by God, but that God seeks us in the same way we seek God.
That’s another wonderful image of God: the Seeker. In the New Testament, Jesus often used this image (see Luke 15:3–10). He compared God to the shepherd who loses one sheep out of one hundred, and leaves the other ninety-nine behind to find the one lost. Or the woman who loses a coin and sweeps her entire house in order to find it. This is the seeking God.
But my favorite image is one from the Islamic tradition, which depicts God as seeking us more than we seek God. It is a hadith qudsi, which Muslim scholars translate as a divine saying revealed by God to the Prophet Muhammad. “And if [my servant] draws nearer to me by a handsbreadth, I draw nearer to him by an arms-length; and if he draws nearer to me by an armslength, I draw nearer to him by a fathom; and if he comes to me walking, I come to him running.”
God wants to be with you. God desires to be with you. What’s more, God desires a relationship with you.
GOD MEETS YOU WHERE YOU ARE
When I entered the Jesuit novitiate, I was baffled about what it meant to have a “relationship” with God. We novices heard about that quite frequently. But what was I supposed to do to relate to God? What did that mean?
My biggest misconception was that I would have to change before approaching God. Like many beginners in the spiritual life, I felt I wasn’t worthy to approach God. So I felt foolish trying to pray. I confessed this to David Donovan. “What do I need to do before I can relate to God?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “God meets you where you are.”
That was a liberating insight. Even though God is always calling us to constant conversion and growth, and even though we are imperfect and sometimes sinful people, God loves us as we are now. As the Indian Jesuit Anthony de Mello said, “You don’t have to change for God to love you.” This is one of the main insights of the First Week of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius: you are loved even in your imperfections. God already loves you.
The Christian can see this clearly in the New Testament. Jesus often calls people to conversion, to cease sinning, to change their lives, but he doesn’t wait until they have done so before meeting them. He enters in relationship with them as he finds them. He meets them where they are and as they are.
But there is another way of understanding this. Not only does God desire to be in relationship with you now, but God’s way of relating with you often depends on where you are in your life.
So if you find happiness primarily through relationships, this may be how God wants to meet you. Look for God through friendship. If you are a parent, God may meet you through your son or daughter (or grandson or granddaughter). Just the other day a man told me that he was having a hard time being grateful. When I asked where he most found God, his face immediately brightened and he said, “My children!” It was easy for him to find God once he knew where to look.
Do you find joy through nature? Look for God in the sea, the sky, the woods, and the fields and streams. Do you engage the world through action? Look for God in your work. Do you enjoy the arts? Go to a museum, or to a concert, or to the movies, and seek God