Who is God?

God isn't who I thought he was when I was a kid. 

Back then God was distant. 

God was the hard-and-fast line between what was good and what was bad.

God was a cold, impersonal person who sat on a throne somewhere out there in the universe, who maybe looked my way every once in a while.

Mostly, God just wasn't around. My world functioned perfectly fine without him--only every once in a while, when I really needed something, I might try and make an effort at reaching him in a prayer (hoping and trying to muster enough faith for it to go the distance).

Today, my concept of God is completely different.

God is the warm flicker of the candles I light when I'm feeling down. 

God is the safety of my blanket when I wrap myself up tight and tuck in my feet. 

God is the excitement, depth, and color of my favorite songs on Spotify. 

God is intimately close to me in every moment of my life. He is the clear, inner ''knowing'' when my experience or logic can't make sense of what to do, when to do it, or what to make of the world around me.

It's me that's changed.

Back then I was distant. 

I was a hard-and-fast line who sorted the world (or myself) into ''good'' and ''bad.'' 

I didn't see how his influence surrounded and permeated the world I lived in. How every moment was both a reflection and a consequence of his love, power, compassion, and creation. 

That his eyes are always on me. His attention, concern, and compassion is always mine. 

When I speak, he hears. I didn't need to muster the faith to reach him.

I needed the faith to relax and let him hold me.

Surrender to the River

"God's will be done" has been a scary thought for most of my life. Most of the time I thought anything I wanted was nowhere near what God wanted for me, so to say "God's will be done" necessarily meant the future would be something good, but not fun. Of course, in the end, I wouldn't regret it, maybe decades down the road, but in the moment it would mean turning away from everything I wanted for me, gritting my teeth, and trusting God with blind faith. Not an attractive option. 

My fear wasn't without reason. At fifteen, I gave up my beloved ballroom dance because deep down it had never felt like it was the right path. As a kid I suffered through church because God wanted me there. As an adult, I shrank from the ever-more-obvious truth that a relationship I wanted to happen was just not part of God's plan for me. 

Even in those time when I didn't have any particular idea of what I wanted for my future, I assumed whatever God provided would be scary and difficult, so even if I wasn't grasping after something else, I still held back from accepting the future with open arms. 

From what I can tell, most of us are like that. It takes faith to believe in a loving God. Faith to believe that He loves me individually. Faith that He knows me better than I know myself. And faith that His timing is the best timing. 

Each of those is a different step. Each one has taken me a long time to climb. And sometimes I bounce up and down with each new situation I'm in.

What if it's easier than I've always though it was though? What if all that time when I was afraid of what God would make me give up or make me do was because I was too attached to the wrong things? 

I mean, obviously, it's a problem to be too attached to things -- a problem that isn't easy to fix even if it is obvious. It's natural to love things, or even need things. 

But what if we got past all that for a moment. What if all that mattered was the work of God and the blessings He's promised to give us, blessings that will bring us joy. What an amazing thing because that means I can stop fighting Him. (and fighting God is an exhausting battle because even at your most determined, there has to be somewhere deep down that knows you can't win). 

And the fear of the future is gone too, because this is God we're talking about. He has planned His work from the beginning and it's for sure going to happen. God's work doesn't stop or fail. If you want to join Him in His work, you've just got to surrender and give yourself up to it and it'll take you along like a giant, flowing river to the absolute, pre-written ending. 

Swimming upstream or sidways - any direction than with the current is going to be exhausting, but we do it all the time. Telling God we know best. Pleading for the outcome we know isn't going to happen but we've got our hearts set on. Going along grumpily when we've decided we can't change God's mind. All that time we could have been swimming with the current, flying along at an unpresidented pace towards the future. So easy, so fast, so absolutely heading towards the place we want to go.

Wouldn't that be easier?