My letter to God – Is it blasphemy to place you in a box?

God… Lord… Master of all I survey and then some…

You have many names and yet you respond to all of them, don’t you?

I’ve wrestled with these feelings for some time now and as you know it came to a head this afternoon.

I was in church. I was in your house, I was dutifully searching for you, but sadly I didn’t feel the enveloping presence that you always infuse me with. Am I wrong to feel pangs of jealousy as I witness an overwhelming number of people sanctuary become overcome with emotion?

Is it something wrong with me, have I become jaded, has my heart been hardened?

There was a  series of creeping sentiments that haunted me as I sat in my seat.

Lord…

“Do you even like me?” “Am I loved?” “Do I matter?”

My question was answered in short order as my thoughts drifted back to the car accident that I walked relatively unscathed from nearly 3 years ago.

You have an inexhaustible affinity for me and the path of my life bears that out.

The shrill cry from the woman in the back of the church punctuated it for me…  As her voice echoed through the sanctuary, it struck me that you felt very far from me in a place that should offer the opposite.

God…

Did you see me as I listened intently to the choir, the speakers and the pastor. Much to my dismay, all I heard was static. I found myself drowning in the layers of a “service” when  all I want is YOU without what I see as the fillers of pageantry.

Lord…

You remember that I grew up in the church… Getting up at the crack of the dawn for the 7:45am early morning service and not leaving until a sometime after 12pm, but during the holidays we didn’t until it was dark outside. It doesn’t seem that long ago, but the years are fleeting.

The thing is… I’ve always found you here, in the church, but now, you are noticeably absent.

Lord…

Do my questions offend you? Did I do something wrong? Do my words ring empty?

You know better than I do, that I don’t have anything figured out. I only understand is imperative that I seek you out with every breath that I take.

God…

I don’t doubt you or the overarching role that you’ve played and continue to play in my life. But, is it a case of my searching for you in places where others are mandating that I should?

I feel as if it is disingenuous that everyone harbors this stubborn insistence that they’ve figured YOU out and that your omnipotence is singularly encased in their respective texts…

Am I naïve to think that the act of restricting you… Is blasphemy of the highest order?

Lord…

Do you feel confined, cramped and restricted by those who profess to love you?

God…

Over the years, you’ve spoken to me with increasing clarity and with unrequited love. You’ve used my shortcomings and flaws as an amplifier of sorts. What I am not and what I aspire to be pulls me closer to you and I understand that.

There is a clarity and a closeness to you that informs me that I am loved.

 

Being still, the wind whipping pass me, the water drowning out that which would drown me, surrounded by splendor…

It is your spirit that always walks in lockstep with me and the silence is deafening.

I hear you, clearly.

I’ve gained so much in the solace that you have often enveloped me in, the places that you have led me in the ongoing process of ruminating so that I can forage past the ugliness and pettiness of…

Me and my humanity…As I don’t have a clue, but I can accept that.

 

Amen.