From
Psalm 15:1-2
H,
It is
easy to approach anything in God as an endless list of do’s and don’ts. It saves
us the time to think about the scale of the thing we are involved in. It will
always be easier to follow the line in front of you and the formal rules of the
road than to think of things in an informal way and to have a personal, rather
than impersonal, relationship with God.
To be
personal with Him takes us far from that cold way that does not include
listening and learning and being connected. We can coast by on the easy
platitudes of the day. We can have a pastor and a building to go to. We can
function as ghosts while our vicarious preacher does all the heavy lifting. We can
have busy lives and sit in safe pews on Sundays and Wednesdays and get executive
summaries of the things that matter but have been choked out of us by the
things that do not. And above all we can finally stifle that awful feeling we
get that we will be called out to live the full depth of our belief even to the
point of daily death and daily resurrection.
The temptation
to put God in a box is huge. Yet we give up more when we refuse to accept the limits
of our way of seeing things. We get a tin god and a tame god and one who is frequently
unable to make us into anything useful or anyone true in the forever to come. The
narrow way is or seems hard but it is drawing us closer to the source of all
right doing. The danger of the dark makes intimacy with the light a necessity
on the long walk home.
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