This awakening, I have discovered, is
something that I share with scores of people that I have come to know as
friends. But others have very different
view about what God is like, are ambivalent about knowing God, or are openly antagonistic
towards God. Why doesn’t everyone find
this same life and light in God – it is there for the taking? Jesus said that he was the way, the truth and
the life. He also said, “Come to me
everyone who is weary”. God has gone on
record as saying that anyone who wants to may come to him. Does the fault lie with God or with us? If God wants all to come to him, why doesn’t
he make them come – but is that actually possible? When it comes to matters of the heart, and I
would propose that knowing God is a matter of the heart, no one can be made to
do anything.
If this coming to God is a matter of
the heart, then maybe I should approach the question of “Why did I find God?”,
or for that matter, “Why does anyone find God?” from a different angle. Let me do this with a little bit of personal
history. My wife’s family came to our
home town when I was in the first grade.
I knew who she was, because her family attended our church, but I doubt
that I spoke two words to her in ten years.
Then one Sunday in June, my brother told me, “You know Barb Campbell is
going to camp with us next week.” I had
just started to notice Barb. Scared,
shy, and lacking in self-confidence somehow I worked up the courage to walk
over to her after church and say, “Hi, John told me you are coming to camp with
us next week.” She smiled - she actually
looked at me and smiled! That next
week in the lodge at camp as well as in the cafeteria Barb would sit with her
girl friends, but there would inevitably be a space open next to her. When I took it, she would inevitably look at
me and smile. I was a goner, head over
heels in love.
Barb’s sister Nancy is nice and also
pretty, so why didn’t I fall in love with her, or with any of a dozen or more
girls in my circle of friends in high school?
And, who fell in love with whom?
Did I fall in love with Barb, did she fall in love with me, or was it
mutual?
Spiritual awakenings remain a
mystery to me, but I think they can be best understood in this light - a mutual
falling in love. God approaches us, we
respond, and our hearts are engaged with his.
Yes, we are talking about a different kind of love than my teenage love
affair with Barb, but it is just as real, and just as deep, if not deeper.
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