In Answer to a Reader

Dear Libby,

Thank you for signing your comment on Day 4 of On the Hunt for God. You wrote:

Okay, so I carefully followed this Hunt for God series to see if you would ever clarify what you are saying, because you are treading on very dangerous ground here. And your readers are mostly made up of people that I care about, so let's be clear: are you perchance saying that the name we use for God is inconsequential? Are you saying that we can call him Buddha, or Allah, or Hecate, and maybe it's all the same? Please be clear.

I have readers in Russia and Germany and Japan and China and Canada and Romania, just to name a few. I have readers in the US that I know and do not know. I care about every single reader; I hope each is encouraged to hunt for God, for I believe that therein lies our best strength for this life.

I had a reader analyze your comment and that person concluded that there is some effort to discredit me, but I am going to assume that is not true. Therefore, I will do my best to respond to your comment and sum up what I hope the series made clear.

We are wired to be on the hunt for God.

There is an utter and true God, spoken through creation, nature, miracles, love and forgiveness, even before we look to a written word.

God cares equally about each person's hunt, and knows each filter and agenda, the sincerity or lack thereof, and the exact way his or her heart might allow utter truth to penetrate.

When we care equally about each person's hunt, regardless of his or her starting point as it compares to ours, then the shift that comes with listening and respect opens the door for God to guide the conversation.

When the utter and true God is given complete freedom to guide the conversation, without our prism of self-righteousness that scatters specks of superiority and seeks to shut down beliefs that don't match ours, He weaves truth and discovery and brings those who truly want to know Him to the meeting place where Love and Forgiveness are presented as the Person of Jesus Christ.

Libby, I am deeply afraid of evangelical shutdown where we dismiss the beliefs of others without listening. God's most appealing quality is His unconditional love. For me, His next most appealing quality is that He always listens, for He knows that, when I feel heard by Him, I feel cared for. He wants to listen to each of us. That is staggering.

He is our model for listening to others. He is not afraid of our beliefs being wrong--He knows the route to Truth. He wrote the Story. He asks that we love others enough to listen; then we are free to hear Him guide us on our way Home...together.

Kind regards,
Debi

When Tender is the Best Food for Strength

This morning was different.

A blazingly bright moon flooded the predawn landscape.

I was drawn to my earphones and Selah and Celtic Woman and Susan Boyle--videos of You Raise Me Up and Amazing Grace and I Dreamed a Dream.

Every time I stopped to get another cup of coffee, I wondered:

Why don't we love God more?

Why is it such effort to find Him in this world of busy and dazzle?

I thought about what it must be like for God, watching us meet another day, looking for our acknowledgement of all that surrounds us in beauty and intricacy and wonder, waiting for our nod of His Presence, a thanks for our blessings.

In the pause I gave Him this morning--that is, I paused to respond to the call to listen--a blazingly bright Love flooded the predawn landscape (of my soul).

Why don't I love God more?

Why do I let busy and dazzle make it such an effort to find Him?

No beating myself up this morning to find those answers. I let Tender be my food for strength as I listened to voices and words and notes and remembered:

I love Him so.

Thank you, God, for the reminder. It was such a blessing to meet Tender this morning.

On the Hunt for God--Day 4

The shift comes in the listening.

We are hunting--as we are wired to do--for the utter and true God, the one that lies above our differing faiths, the True Story.

We listen to creation.

We listen to the miraculous.

Perhaps most importantly, we listen to the redemption that lies in stories of incredible love and forgiveness.

A daughter-in-law forgives her mother-in-law's tragic mistake of running over their precious toddler.

A father forgives his son's murderer, and teams up with the grandfather of that very perpetrator of crime. Their shared vision? To help young people not fall victim to hate and the powerlessness of lack of self-leadership.

These stories come from people of differing faiths. But in common lie Love and Forgiveness.

When we listen for Love and Forgiveness in action, something within us stirs. We get a glimpse of God, our Hunted.

That is how we know. Those of us who find the utter and true God in the Bible, whose Story is the revelation of Jesus in history, recognize that which we are wired to find.

But we began this hunt thinking of the whole of humanity, including those for whom the Bible has never been an option.

Love and Forgiveness awaken our wiring that hunts for God. Of all the written trajectories of faith, the Bible alone explains the redemptive, supernatural power of Love and Forgiveness.

The utter and true God meets our genuine hunt with the greatest prize of all: the discovery of Jesus, the very embodiment of Love and Forgiveness.

On the Hunt for God--Day 3

Hunters in action become single-minded. Distractions are kept at bay; the hunted becomes the focus and the passion. Time is set aside to hunt for the all-consuming pursuit. A prize lies in the balance.

We are wired to be on the hunt for God. In our hunting moments, we become single-minded. Distractions are kept at bay, and God the Hunted becomes our Focus and our Passion. We grant time for the moments in which it becomes our all-consuming pursuit. The very discovery of God lies in the balance.

How can we know we are discovering the utter and true God, the Story?

So many people seem to find opposing versions of God.

I believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God. Others do not. In our conversations, can we pursue hunting ground outside of something written? Is there a hallmark hunting ground that speaks the Story--the utter truth of God--accessible to all of humanity before we point to written trademarks of our differing faiths?

We all reside in the most pristine hunting ground of all--our bodies and the universe. We start there.

The science of our bodies points to a designer, an architect. Even if we think we have that figured out, along comes the moment when disease is miraculously healed, when strength to act in an emergency defies the natural strength of the person, when a prodigy displays his or her gifts to the world; in short, when the inexplicable takes center stage. Now we are pointing to a Designer, an Architect--a supernatural Someone.

We expand our view to the universe, and we are stopped in our all-knowing tracks as the hunt simply becomes too large and too great for our minds to grasp. We have discovered the Hunted--and realize that we, even in our miraculous detail, are the tiniest of the tiny within this universe and see but a mere speck of Him.

And then the greatest mystery of all is before us: why do we--seemingly so tiny, so inconsequential--find within us remarkable capacities to love and forgive? Does God the Story have something to do with these qualities?

Tomorrow: Love, Forgiveness, and the Story

On the Hunt for God--Day 2

We are wired to be on the hunt for God.

If He is the prize, then we want to find Him as He truly is--the utter and true God--as He exists with or without us, exactly as He wants to be found.

Take any story--Little Red Riding Hood, for instance. The story exists above whatever language in which we share it. My English, your French or Spanish or Romanian, all tell the story and it is important that we are accurate. The story exists with or without--above, so to speak--our language for communicating it.

The truth of God is the Story. It exists with or without us--above us--and with or without our language for communicating it.

What is that Story? How do we go about hunting for the utter and true God and find Him--and tell the Story--exactly as He wants to be found and shared?

Do we clamor that our way is the only way and shut down others who have a genuine heart for the hunt?

There is only one way, one Story. There is only one God and one Truth that He is about. The absolute fact that we are created means we have one and only one Creator.

The pause button here is that before we can examine that Story, would it be pleasing to this utter God to unseat ourselves from the clamor?

If first we place value on every soul who is in the hunt with us, regardless of how they currently interpret the Story, then we honor each of (this One and Only) God's creations.

To honor each other--to respect the "language" of each hunter--is to honor God. This respect does not diminish the Story. It opens the door for conversation that will help hunters the world over discover the utter and true Story.

Tomorrow: how can we know the Story?

On the Hunt for God--Day 1

We are wired to be on the hunt for God.

We can reject it, taint it, ignore it, misread it, use it to deceive and hurt others--and that is just a partial list.

This wiring is our wrestling match while we are in our human bodies.

Are Buddhists hunting for God?

Are Muslims hunting for God?

Are atheists hunting for God?

Are Christians hunting for God?

If we could just make this hunt--this wiring--the conversation, rather than critiquing and erupting on and defaming each other--we might find something amazing in common.

The conversation might go like this:

What is your view of God? Who is He to you?

What life experiences got you to that view?

Where do you look for confirmation of your view?

What if we listened to each other's hunting stories?

We are typically so tightly moored to our version of the story that we insist only that others come to our side.

Mostly we are afraid of others' moorings--interestingly, God is not. He knows how each person could come into full view of His truth and embrace Him in response to their wiring, regardless of culture or faith labels.

Do we want to venture into this world of listening? Do we trust God--and ourselves--enough to ask Him to help us embrace others' quests and find truth together?

What a different world that would be.

Tomorrow: the Story that is above our story.

Sometimes We are in the Backseat

Sometimes we are in the backseat of our own car.

The one we are supposed to be driving.

Yesterday I attended a fun wedding, where I ate the M&M's on the table indiscriminately and waited for the slice of wedding cake most slathered in icing.

I was in the backseat of my vegetables, plant-based eating car. When I steer--and eat whole-food, plant-based style, I am driving my health. Otherwise, I am a passenger at the mercy of some reckless driver (me, unchecked).

We drive so many cars: our budget car, our time-management car, our God-first car, our kindness-to-others car.

When we drive, we plan our money, we spend our time wisely, we keep God on our radar, and we put others before ourselves.

Sometimes I feel like life is this race track of bumper cars, all bumping into each other because I am in the backseat of all of them and they are moving my life without my own leadership.

What a gift that we have another chance to drive each day--God's mercies truly are new every morning (Lamentations 3).

God, driver mercies, please. And could You hide the M&M's?