Sharing Life with God

As I was driving to mid-week church yesterday, I had some interesting insights about how God wants us to share our daily lives with him. I thought it was quite powerful so I stopped and scribbled some of it down.

Below is an extended version of what I've been thinking about :

Imagine you are an artist, and you've produced a masterpiece. How do you think you would get the most satisfaction and pleasure out of your art? I'd suggest that it would be when standing alongside someone else who is admiring and appreciating what you have created. Or put yourself in the place of a master-chef (or home cooking enthusiast), producing a seven course culinary treat. Which do you think you would prefer - to receive a cursory "Thanks. The food was good" at the end, or to sit down alongside the diners and watch as they savour the delicious meal? To see the delighted reaction on their faces as they taste each new piece of food, and to hear their satisfied "mmmm's" as they eat and nod their appreciation for what you have prepared for them.

Finally, imagine you are an expert gardener (this is a big stretch of the imagination for me). You have spent years crafting a wonderful garden, carefully selecting and planting each tree and flower, positioning them exactly where you want according to your master plan. You include paths and fish-ponds and all sorts of other special features which make this garden a wonderful place to explore. Now certainly after all this time and work, you yourself would be able to get immense pleasure from this garden, but don't you think this would be amplified even more by walking through it with another, sharing in their surprise and enjoyment of what you have built.

Now take the big step of trying to put yourself in God's shoes for a moment. It's impossible for us to comprehend just what it's like to be God, to have an constant awareness of everything in the vastness of the created universe, simultaneously being in tune with huge supernovae many billions of light-years away and the movement of a single bacterium here on earth. And of course not forgetting that He is also interested in every moment of every life of the six billion or so humans on this planet of ours. That kind of existence that God has is just too mind-blowing for our little human brains to even start to understand.

But on a simpler level God can be compared to the artist, the chef, and the gardener I mentioned earlier. He has created something amazing, and part of His reason for creating it is for us to enjoy and appreciate it, along with him. And part of his reason for creating us is so that there is someone else to enjoy all that he has made.

If we look at Genesis chapter 1, after God completes each step in the creation of the world, we see the line "and God saw that it was good" It's almost like an artist stepping back from his canvas and nodding his approval. But what artist would want to paint a picture that no-one sees? And what chef would create a meal that only she or he gets to eat? So God moves on from there to create humans, beings in the image of God, who can share in his appreciation and enjoyment of creation. He puts man and woman in His garden, where He walks with them and participates as they explore his creation, discovering animals and putting names to them. In the perfect world God shares in the life of his people, walking alongside them and getting pleasure from their enjoyment of his world.

Now let's switch metaphors to that of a parent with a child (there's no metaphor that can adequately encompass all the complexities of a relationship with God, so using multiple ones is the best we can do). Parents long to be able to share in the lives of their children. It's an amazing feeling in the heart of a parent watching as your child explores and learns about the world that we've brought them into. But as children grow, often the amount of their lives that they share with their parents decreases. The inevitable grunt of "nothing" in answer to the question "what did you do at school today?" As they grow up through childhood and adolescence the child becomes more and more independant and the parents can only share in that child's life to the extent that the child chooses to let the parents in.

And our relationship with God is similar to this. He longs to be a part of our lives and share with us as we walk through the world which he created for us, but only does so to the extent that we choose to let him in. And there's a wide variation in people's responses here. Some are like a child who leaves home at the earliest opportunity, going off and living their life without maintaining any contact with God, even to the point that they deny his very existence. And for these people God, like the father of the prodigal son, patiently waits against the day that they choose to come home into his loving arms. Even when they are far from Him, he still maintains his love for them, although he grieves that he is not invited to share in their lives.

Other people acknowledge their parents, and if asked would say they are indeed thankful for all that their parents have done for them, but then as they 'grow up' they go off and live their own busy lives, independantly and without much contact with their parents, aside from the occaisional visit because of guilt or a sense of duty. Probably a great majority of us Christians relate to God in this manner most of the time. We send up prayers to him occaisionally, even every day, and go to church on Sunday and maybe do other church activities, but for 95% or more of our waking time, we don't give God a second thought.

I think God wants something better for us than this. I don't think he wants to be like the cook (or the parent) who creates a sumptious meal only to get a cursory "thanks, that was nice" in response at the end. I think God wants to share with us as we consume every morsel of the great feast of life that he has prepared for us. He wants to walk alongside us as we stroll through his garden, and he wants to share with us the highs and lows of 'growing up' rather than being a distant, unappreciated parent. And the thing with God is that this is actually possible. Unlike a human parent, God is always present at our side. He doesn't just live up in the sky in heaven so we can call up to Him once in a while - rather his existence fills the universe and He is actually proximate to us wherever we go.

So prayer doesn't need to be like a letter to someone in the sky, or an email, or even like a phone-call (which seems to me to be the metaphor most of us have of prayer - like God's waiting on the end of the line - we pick up the phone and talk to him in the morning and hang up when we are finished, and he sits there waiting until we decide to phone him again - there actually was a very geeky 50s song called 'Royal Telephone' which captured this picture nicely). Rather prayer is talking to a friend who is right there beside us, sitting next to us on the couch or in the car, or in our office or where-ever we are. And if we properly appreciate this metaphor for prayer, then we can truly begin to share every moment of our lives with him, the ever-present friend who walks beside us through the garden of life which he has created.

A similar concept is expressed by Brother Lawrence, a Catholic monk from a few hundred years ago, in a book called "Practicing the Presence of God." Brother Lawrence saw life and prayer as a continual conversation with God, throughout every moment of every day of his life. And this truly is the way in which God wants to share our lives with us. He wants to enjoy his creation through my eyes my life, to savour it with me and share in it's delights. Just as Jesus invites us to share in his body and his blood in the communion supper, we should invite him to share in our body and blood and accompany us through life. Communion is not just a symbol of death and sacrifice - it is also a symbol of a life shared. God came down to share his life with us, and he wants us to share ours with him.

The challenge for us is to consider how we can invite God to share in our daily life, and how we can be more aware of his continual presence at our side. This is certainly not an easy habit or mindset to get into, but I think it is what God wants for us and will allow us to truly experience life as He originally intended.