I’ve spent the past month thinking off and on about what I might share in this first official blog post. I kept coming back to the same idea so here goes.
Early in my chemotherapy a dear friend, Julia, gave me a couple of books to encourage and strengthen me/my faith for the journey ahead. NOT GOD ENOUGH-Why Your Small God Leads to Big Problems by J.D. Greear was one she happened to see in the store and thought might be good. Boy, was she right! I was definitely challenged.
I, like many of my generation, was raised with a religious background. I come from generations of mainline traditional religious people, mostly Methodists with a few Baptists sprinkled in. I attended church services every Sunday along with Sunday School. My family was definitely more than just Christmas and Easter service attenders. We sang in choirs, volunteered on committees, and served in leadership roles, a pattern I followed until recent years. My brother’s move to New Mexico in the early 80s introduced our family to the evangelical flavor of Christianity. That exposure reinvigorated my faith journey and introduced me to contemporary Christian worship and music. I maintain a fondness for the old traditions and hymns of the Church but thoroughly enjoyed newer expressions of worship – and still do to this day. About this same time my father was holding his own bible study group in which he assisted me and many others dissect the Bible for deeper understanding.
Up until this point, I would describe myself as an average American Christian who lived a full life of home, family, friends, work, social life, volunteerism, and, of course, religion. I can’t remember the date but I remember the events and the location. It was after a Tuesday Night Bible Study, driving down Rt. 17 with my best friend, Michele, when we almost simultaneously said to each other “We’re going the wrong way!” But we didn’t mean literally east instead of west, we meant the priorities in our lives and our understanding of what “God” and a relationship with the Creator of the entire universe really meant. Don’t get me wrong, working hard, helping out family and friends, softball and bowling were all good things to spend my time on. They still are (minus the softball and bowling!) What we both seemed to hear was a voice (not literally) saying “there is more and there is better in this life.”
Fast forward through a lot of my story and faith development (which can be shared at a later time if you’re interested). Reading Greear’s book took me back to those days before I changed the direction of my life. My god was not God enough. That god was just another piece of the wheel chart of my life. You know what I mean? That circle diagram so often used to show the “whole person”. I know you nurse readers know what I mean. “Self” goes prominently in the middle and is surrounded by all the parts of the person’s physical, mental, emotional, social, financial existence occupying a wedge in the wheel. That was me! And I had a spot on my wheel for God.
What I’ve discovered over the past 30+ years is that I’m actually only a very small, albeit important piece of God’s infinite wheel chart. Grasping this puts a definite shift in perspective and understanding how to live out this earthly journey. Gaining more wisdom, more understanding is a quest that gives the same reinvigoration, or better yet a new invigoration – not to check off the religion box on my life’s to-do list - but to explore and experience more and more of this living, almighty God and the vastness of his unconditional love for each of us.
If there is a God who is the God of the Bible, this quest is not just a good thing to spend one’s time on, it is the best thing to spend time on, the most important thing. If you believe the first part of that statement is true, I encourage you to press on and press in with all your strength, mind, and soul. If you’re not sure it’s true, that’s a great place to start the quest. It’s an essential question to answer because the days ahead will surely bring challenges of all types.
This small section is from the book cover:
“We like God small. We prefer a God who is safe, domesticated, who thinks like we think, likes what we like, and whom we can manage, predict and control. A small God is convenient. Practical. Manageable.
“The truth, God is big. Bigger than big. Bigger than all the words we use to say big.
“Ironically, many today seem turned off by the concept of an awesome terrifyingly great God. We assume that a God you would need to fear is guilty of some kind of fault. For us, thinking of God as infinitely greater and wiser than we are – who would cause us to tremble in his presence – is a leftover relic from an oppressive, archaic view of religion.
“But what if this small version of God we’ve created is holding us back from the greatest experience of our lives – from genuine, confident, world-transforming faith?” (Greear, J.D., Not God Enough, Zondervan, 2018)
“A god small enough to be understood is not big enough to be worshipped.” Evelyn Underhill
