A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY

In my previous blog “God plays hide and seek” I wrote that “My experience is that when God appears to have disappeared it has been for one or two reasons: maybe both. Either in order to invite me to deepen my trust in God’s reality and love, despite the seeming lack of evidence. Or to widen my experience of how and where God might be encountered.” I then, much to my surprise found myself writing “Maybe Jesus discovered something similar as he was dying on the cross.?”     I’ve been mulling about that ever since,

Jesus cried out “My God why have you forsaken me.” presumably because He had hoped that His loving God would come to His rescue, as He Jesus had rescued others, from sickness, exclusion, death, etc. But God didn’t. Jesus was being abandoned by the God Whom He had come to know and trust, and being challenged to trust a deeper revelation and understanding of God. To be open to discover God’s love expressed in a more profound way, both for Him and for humankind, a discovery that could only be made by His dying.

So what was God teaching Him here?

1        God’s love transcends death, rather than suffering and death denying it. There is a bigger picture.

2       Jesus had begun something rather than ending it.

3       He had to die to free up those whom He had called to continue His ministry, and so that they might know this bigger picture too.

4       He will go on to tell them that they are accepted & loved by God…just as He had discovered Himself to be, subsequent to His baptism.

5       They have to let go of Him in order for them to continue & develop His ministry. Jesus has played His part & now it’s up to them.

6       He [His Spirit] will be with them & guide them

7       They must learn to trust themselves…. God will do wonderful things through them.

8       It will not be easy for them as it hadn’t been for Jesus.

If all this is true, then its presumably true for you and me as well. Feeling abandoned by God may be a gift inviting us to grow in our relationship with God, because we are ready, and perhaps needing, to do so?