A God Who Loves

Every now and then, while a seminarian, the admissions office would ask me to have lunch with a prospective student. I loved doing this! It was always neat meeting people and hearing what it was that was bringing them to seminary. Sometimes these conversations led to new connections and new classmates, and even the times it didn't, I often learned something.

On one of these lunches, I was interacting with a person who knew a LOT. While she had not been in a formal theological education setting, she had read many books and had spent time studying and learning with some theologians and religious mentors.

It was interesting hearing about her experiences and what she was passionate about. She had a strong, biblical background but I found us diverging to two different paths at one point. She shared that in her studies, she encountered a man who identified as a spiritual wanderer. He knew he believed in God, but refused to offer any absolute ideas about who or what God is. The prospective student expressed frustration and annoyance with this and said she had to stop talking with him because he had "yet to land his God plane."

This phrase struck me. How interesting! After taking a moment to reflect, I had to admit to her, that I'm not sure that I had yet landed my God plane, or that I'd ever fully land my God plane because I think God might be more than I can fully comprehend. I hope my God plane always stays in the sky. I think it flies often in a specific direction, but I don't know that it will ever land, that I'll ever believe I know all that there is to know about God.

How about you? What do you know to be true about God? What questions still exist in your heart? How do you relate to God and how do you think God relates with humanity? This Sunday, in our studying of John 15:9-17, we'll explore one way in which we might understand and relate to God.