This I Believe

I used to believe in the power of God and Dad.

When as a kid I implored my parents for a pet, I was persistent. Asking for smaller and smaller pets as I figured this would increase my chances. After begging for a parakeet one night, Dad told me to pray and believe God for it.

So I did.

And sure enough, God and Dad came through, and I was granted permission to get a parakeet, on the strict condition that I alone take care of it.

And I did.

I devoted myself to my new pet and the many more parakeets, hamsters, mice, a rabbit and fish to come.

As a teenager, I wanted to go on a multi-nation mission trip, and again, Dad told me to believe God for the money to go. And again, God and Dad came through. Somehow, he was able to come up with the amount needed even though we didn't have much.

God and Dad were on a pedestal in my world.

They were powerful, benevolent beings to be respected and admired. Over time, through a series of unfortunate events, involving various members of the family, Dad was shot down from his high post, and with him, went God.

Dad and I have had a civil, yet distant relationship for years, and so have God and I. Though I often longed for a warmer, closer connection, I found myself unable to speak their language, as that would involve entering their reality.

God and Dad create reality. I am familiar with both their realities, but am currently living in the world of flesh and blood, of action and reaction, choice and consequence. I can relate to God’s spiritual reality as transcendent of this world, as above and beyond that of the senses, but I have difficulty entering that reality these days.

Perhaps it is not so much difficulty as it is unwillingness. It has taken me years to realize that I have always related to God through the reality of Dad. In our home, Dad’s word was law, and to Dad, the law was God’s word.

Ergo, Dad’s word equals God’s word. Dad’s reality becomes God’s reality.

When I no longer could, or would, speak Dad’s language, as it were, I found I lost my ability to communicate with God. When I stopped traveling to that remote and distant planet of Dad’s version of reality, I also stopped entering into the realm I had come to know as the presence of God.

So I spent a bunch of years trying to untangle what was God and what was Dad.

I’m still not totally sure half the time, but so far, I’ve come up with this:

God is good and so is Dad. God, however, has omniscient perspective, and Dad does not. God’s definition of good is often what we think is bad but ends up being good anyway… What Dad means for good often ends up bad. Dad fails and God doesn’t.

Dad wanted to teach me to believe in God – to trust in God and not in people. Inadvertently, Dad taught me to believe in himself. To expect him to come through with a solution to my problems. When he fell short of my expectations, I didn’t know what to believe.

It took me a long time to learn that there’s nothing wrong in needing people. Not to fix your problems or live life for you. But it is through people God shows his love, shows his will, interacts with us. No man is an island. People are the voice by which God communicates – most of the time. God became man. He chose the human form. He made friends.

Now, I believe in the power of God.

I believe this power is everywhere in the physical reality God created. In the air, in the mountains, in the streams – God is in the flowers, the trees – and in the people I find myself surrounded with. So, go ahead, talk to me. Engage me. I want to hear from God.