Someone I
met in the gym found God when he prayed to get free of addiction to
cannabis. He prayed. Something happened
and, so the lad told me, he now sees the world in rosier colours with goodness,
truth and beauty shining all over the place.
God is only a prayer away.
The scripture
passage from the book of Revelation in which John the seer sees the risen
Christ and gets messages. He got his vision in Patmos on the Lord’s Day. I was once
on Patmos Island at an open air Greek Orthodox eucharist and it gave me a clue to his vision. There were
elders round the altar that morning, the priests. The bread and wine on it
stood for the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, slain for us. The hundreds present
singing beautiful chant gave a sense of surrounding angels. I think, and
several Bible scholars agree, that John the seer had his vision right there at Sunday
eucharist in Patmos.
How do you
find God?
You can find
him in prayer, through the Bible and at the eucharist. Here’s the sting, if you
like. You find God through the Church.
Without the Church, God, to use David Cameron’s image, is like receiving
Classic FM in the Cotswolds. The Church helps you tune in to God. John the seer
was Church. He said his prayers, knew his bible and came to the eucharist. I’m
sure he served others and confessed his sins, two other ways God comes close to
us.
How do we
find God?
In the last
scripture reading from John’s Gospel illustrated on the eucharist booklet cover
we’re told Jesus showed himself again to
his disciples after his resurrection. Not only did he show them himself as
God’s Son, he showed them the best place to fish. Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some. So
they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so
many fish.
Finding God is costly – we have to turn away from self – but it’s
always profitable. I think of the
lad I met in the gym who prayed when he was in a bad state and saw his prayer
answered. God answers prayer, of that I’m utterly convinced, even if some of
his answers perplex me.
As the American writer Tim Keller says in answer to Richard Dawkins: If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn't stopped evil and suffering in the world, … you have… a God great and
transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you
can’t know... you can’t have it both ways. I like Keller
we had a book club on his classic ‘The reason for God’ a couple of years
back. In it he asks, incisively, whether the civil rights movement across the
world could have emerged from secular belief in the goodness of human nature,
rather than the Christian conviction about the sinfulness of human hearts we've already voiced at the start of the eucharist.
How do we
find God?
Through the
Church, for nowhere else can you engage with preaching and sacraments which
bring Christ alive in our hearts. Oh yes there’s sin in the Church, in you and
I – but there’s Christ as well and Jesus Christ gives us access to God as the way, the truth and the life.
Through
prayer, scripture, eucharist, repentance, service and reflection God in Christ
comes close. The children of our school - now regularly reflect. Christian meditation started in January. At the
start of every afternoon session the children take time to be still and
meditate. We will have opportunity to do the same next weekend which will have
a contemplative feel to it with the Quiet Day in the Martindale and the 10am
Contemplative eucharist with Dan Wolpert.
How do we
find God?
You can’t
beat being still. So let’s do just that, for we read his invitation in Psalm
46v10 Be still and know that I am God. Let’s do
that.
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