An Alien Like God

When you think of an alien, what comes into your mind?  I always think of some weird looking creature with huge eyes, missing a nose or ears or a mouth.  My mind thinks of an alien being a demon looking creature that is either black or green, scaly or moist with some slime.  There is no evidence what so ever that another life force from another planet has ever been here yet we have done an excellent job conjuring up an abstract image that we believe all alien life force would have.  Depending on the movie, we give them vicious qualities where they are aiming to eliminate all life as we know it.  They are an invasive species that are so intelligent that if we don’t rally together, we are going to be extinct.  Do you think we do the same thing with God?  We can’t see God but, unlike aliens, we have evidence of his existence.  The activity that we do have from God causes us to paint a picture of him that is less than favorable.  Even my best description of God is flawed and a mile miss from the bulls-eye.  In our desperate need for an understanding of our life’s experiences, we give God qualities that make us feel better about ourselves and the decisions we make.  

As I said last week, the last few months I have been challenged with my inner image of God and I want to extend that image to you.  I think of him as loving, strong, dependable and intense; then I am starting to see that my ideas of these qualities are flawed, so my inner image of God is flawed.

God Will Never Leave Us…

How can we wrap our minds around the truth that God is an every present King and Savior in the time of trouble? Psalms 46:1.  In our hope to describe God, he has been compared to wind and air.  Wind is an invisible force that destroys and rescues.  The power of wind can ruin a boat’s sail, or it can bring a stranded survivor to shore.  It can cause a bird to sour over the storms but can also cause it to lose balance and collide in something.  Wind is strong but can you hold wind?  Wind stops being wind when it is no longer moving.  Can you take a perfect picture of wind or can you only take pictures of its effects?  The air around us has the same amazing qualities.  Air is all around me, but I don’t see it.  I have never woken up wondering if there was going to be enough air to go around today.  I know that my lungs can take it in as long as I am healthy.  Yet, air can be trapped, and we can run out of air—still it cannot be seen by us.  

The God who created the heavens and the earth, the sun, moon, the stars and the galaxies is more present in our everyday then the wind beneath a bird’s wind or the air we take into our lungs.  Maybe you feel like God has left you on your own to fight a difficult battle, you may even feel like he is watching you beg for help in your prayers. You think he measures our level of desperation to determine when he will step in.   Despite the hurt, we have faced over the years—or maybe one that you are facing now—God will (and has never) left our side. 

…Because He is Everywhere But…

Can you wrap your mind around the idea that God is everywhere?  He is in the bathroom with us when we are relieving ourselves.  He is sitting in the theater with us when we’re watching that movie.  He is even in your bedroom with you when you are having a moment with your significant other.  The only way to explain it is like this—I know empty sealed bottles float but—imagine an empty bottle that is at the bottom of an ocean.  Anywhere the bottle moves on the ocean floor, water is there.  He is everywhere.  Even David said it in Psalms 139:7-12

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
 Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in [a]hell, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall [b]fall on me,”
Even the night shall be light about me;
12 Indeed, the darkness [c]shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.

When you think of my bottle and ocean analogy, there is one place the water was not…inside.  Yes we say that God is everywhere; however there is one place he won’t invade, and that is in the hearts of a man that refuses to believe in him.  Even though it may not feel like it, our world, our galaxies are submerged in God, but the hardness and stubbornness of a rebellious, reckless man does not have God in it.   

But I Know Someone God Forsook

So if David knew that if he made his bed in Hell that God would be there, how come God forsook his own son on the cross?  I thought he would never leave us?  You are so right, and on the day that Jesus died on the cross Jesus, in his agony, quotes a scripture found in Psalms 22:1 written by David.  In these verses, David sounds like us.  He is a man that is desperate for God to rescue him from something in a time of pour desperation.  In my pursuit to understand this verse, I looked into Psalms 22 and I notice that a lot of it was a comparison of things as opposed to pure reality.  He calls himself a worm, not a man (6).  He describes his enemies as bulls, lions, and dogs(12, 13 16).  He feels poured out like water (14), and he says all his bones are out of joint.  David, like us, can interpret life differently when we are looking through the lenses of pain.  In our chaos and confusion, we can feel like God has forsaken us.  Look at verse 2 of Psalms 22- he said that he called out to God day and night for him and God did not answer.  David feels like God has turned away from him because—through David’s perspective, God is not there.  Chapter 22 is the same one Jesus quotes from.  So the question is did God really forsake Jesus?  When one looks at the words “forsake”, scholars have said that Jesus was talking about God’s fellowship and the favor was taken away because the iniquity of us all was placed on him.  God was present, but there was no communication, and that’s what Jesus needed, to hear his Father’s voice and feel his love while bearing the sins of the whole world, present, and future.  He was pushing through something that no human has ever endured before.  So what happens when the voice of God that had been comforting him and giving him strength stopped when he needed it the most?  You feel forsaken.  

Now let’s go back to David, remember in vs. 2 he states that he called out to God day and night and did not answer?  Well look at verse (??)

For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;
Nor has He hidden His face from Him;
But when He cried to Him, He heard.

When we are in a place of hurt and pain, our perspective changes.  When we are out of the pain, we can see clearer.  I heard it once said, “Perception and reality are two different things.  Our perspective depends on our own values which are shared by the affections of our heart.”  If you aim to see God for who he really is, resist the urge to give him attributes that we think he has.  Remember that God will never leave you even though we don’t feel him or see him.