Relationship

As my head was resting on my pillow the other night and I was trying to go to sleep, my brain couldn't help but think about the concept of relationship. Relationship is found when things are "related" to one another in some way or can "relate" to one another. I thought about the original relationship in the human race, between God and Adam. "God created man in His own image in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them." (Genesis 1:26)

God is able to have a relationship with man, because there are things that we share in common with him, since we are made in His image. Similarly, there are things that we do not have in common with Him, such as a pronation toward sin and a broken nature. I think it's interesting that the makeup of our relationship with Him both includes matters which we relate on as well as areas of opposition, which requires an extension of grace or compromise to cover the gap spaces. I can't help but draw lines of inference and similarity to natural relationships from this heavenly model.

When two humans have a relationship with one another, it's because they "relate" to one another in some fashion, but there will also be areas of opposition and disconnect. This brokenness possesses the power to sharpen each member involved in the relationship, but it seems to me that this element of brokenness is what brings about pain in relationship. The similarities and established roads for intimacy produce fruit and pleasantry, but our differences and obstacles for knowing each other are the trip wires for frustration and pain.

Why in the world did God decide to set it up like this??? People don't usually dwell on the fact that God feels pain, but realizing that there is pain in all disconnect and in all gap spaces of relationship it's obvious that God partakes a macro-scale of pain continually.

Very connected to this thought is the idea that people often talk about loving without expectation or any assumption of reciprocation. I've interpreted many voices from the modern day church to teach that if we're living and giving from a place of no expectation that we will feel happy and free, while investing into broken people and relationships. On the contrary I think that whether a person has expectations of reciprocation, acceptance or the like, it still hurts when someone rejects such an offering. I feel this way because I think that God's heart hurts every time we reject relationship with Him, His promises, or His gifts of love. I don't think God has unhealthy expectations of reciprocation or a need of acceptance. He knows who He is and has no need of us, but He still feels pain when the gaps are not bridged.

I still don't understand why He designed relationships in our universe in this way or why relationship seems to be the DNA of why and how our universe exists. There seems to be a theme of beauty, pain and restoration though. On a sentimental level, acknowledging that God experiences the same pain that we do in relationships makes me feel better and makes me think that relationships are worth it.

Jehova's love...

So I had a conversation today with a Jehova's Witness, which sparked an interesting thought inside of my head about why I'm hooked on Christianity. Out of curiosity, I was probing my ex-boyfriend's brother about Witness beliefs. Whenever a Jehova's witness comes to my door the last thing I want to do is stand there and argue for countless hours about our faiths, while something is burning in the kitchen, but when I know a person through other avenues of life and come to find they are a Jehova's Witness, it makes me want to ask the more personal questions about how they became involved, how it affects their life and why they are committed to their religion. I realized after I had wormed my way politely into the conversation the only true question that was burning inside of me to ask was, "Do you get to have a relationship with God and what do you think about the Holy Spirit?"

Driving home I was pondering a phrase I heard uttered out of the mouth of an acquaintance over dinner with my friends. Kim, a thirties something, hippy-esque, single woman was expressing over the beer in her hand, "I'm hooked on Jesus and can't get away from His love, no matter where I go, I can't find anything better. I always come back." In my pensive moment behind my steering wheel, pulling up to my drive way tonight my soul couldn't echo those words more emphatically. It's His LOVE!!!! I can get fed up with rules, religion, brokenness of the world, gaps in relationships, and what God asks of me does not always seem pleasant at first on all occasions, but at the heart of the matter for me, I'm hooked on His intense, dangerous, all consuming love.

At the moment I'm in-between relationships with several men and upon soul searching through my emotional processes with my experiences of the masculine I decided that what I'm looking for in a man is the intensity and acceptance I find with God. In God I have complete freedom, opportunities for thrill seeking, pushing boundaries and exhilaration. I'm completely satisfied in my relationship with God, because as much as I resist, as much as screw up, as extravagantly as I flail or as loud as I scream, He sees through it all and He decides to love me. Not only does He love me, but He sees the true me and calls me out of any of the superfluous bull crap.

I love the Bible and God's precepts, but if my religion rested solely on a set of words or rules and my acceptance was dependent on my behaviors I don't think I would last long. The thing that continually draws me deeper and deeper into a relationship with the God of Christianity is a God who is not scared of mess ups, encourages creativity, and meets me in the darkest, most hurting places of my soul. He's there for me at the beginning of every day as I drive to work, He's there for me in the moments when I lose my cool with my employees, He's there for me when others hurt my soul and He's there for me at the end of my day when I'm exhausted and my deepest desire is to curl up inside of His fiery heart and simply stay for eternity. It's this unshakeable quality of God's love and faithfulness, that reaches through fire and hangs on that makes me a Christian. I don't think anything else could work for me. I gotta love Him back!!!!