Carrie bought me this figurine for my desk.
I walked outside to my car this morning and felt like yelling. Now, that’s not really appropriate behavior for a guy my age in my neighborhood so I didn’t, but I felt like it. If I had been my four year old son I would’ve thrown a temper tantrum right then and there in the driveway. Can you imagine the neighbor’s faces if I had just thrown myself down on the driveway and started kicking and screaming? At least, I would’ve given them all something to talk about. The reason I was so angry was that it was cold out! I am totally sick of winter, and we just got a beautiful taste of spring for a couple of days; it even got up to 16 Celsius for a little bit and I was loving it. I don’t know if it’s the dark days, or the wet slushy roads, or the cold biting wind that I hate the most, but I know it’s been getting to me. I just don’t feel like putting up with winter anymore. It’s getting me bummed.
And it’s amazing how quick this type of feeling affects the spiritual life as well. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m doubting what I believe, or having any major faith crisis, it’s just that I’ve been feeling a little spiritually blah lately. I’m not feeling as energized as I’ve felt in the past. I’m feeling like I could really use a spiritual springtime. And then today I came across a passage of scripture that always seems to catch me.
In Luke 11, Jesus is trying to get the disciples to understand what prayer is and what it can accomplish. You can see why it was such a big deal to Jesus, because prayer played such a crucial role in his life. He was always disappearing to be alone with God, to be re-energized, and to receive his instructions and guidance. In this passage Jesus says:
“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish will give him a snaked instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Now I know that this passage is about prayer and asking God for the things we need to accomplish what he’s given us to accomplish, but what struck me was the portrayal of God as a good father yearning to pour out “good gifts” to his children he so desperately loves. I wonder how many of us really think about God that way on a daily basis. I know we give mental assent to the concept of God as a good Father, but do we really believe it in our guts? I think if we did it would feel a lot like a warm spring day.
So anyways, since this passage tells me to ask God for good gifts, I think I’m going to ask God for the belief that he is really that good. Or maybe I should ask him for the belief, not that He is that good, but that He would actually give anything to me. I guess that’s really the problem, isn’t it? It’s not that we don’t believe in God’s goodness, it’s that we can’t seem to get away from thinking that our badness affects God’s goodness, which isn’t true at all.
That leads me to another thought: Romans 12 tells us to be “transformed by the renewing of [our] mind” and I’ve always thought of that in the moral sense of the verse. I’ve always thought that what needs to be renewed is a clearer understanding of what sin is and isn’t, but what if it goes beyond that? What if what really needs to be transformed and renewed is our understanding of how deeply, passionately, and ridiculously God loves us. It’s as if Paul understood this when he told the church that he would pray for them to understand how wide, and how high, how deep and how long the love of God was. He got that it was only through divine and supernatural intervention that we could ever get close to understanding the love of God. It’s only through a transformation of our minds that we will truly grasp the love of God. It’s only through the warm glow of love on our faces that we’ll be able to truly learn to enjoy the springtime of God’s grace.
