For much of my life, I understood God as a being and that He was
over everything and powerful and had a plan He wanted me to fulfill but I
saw it as something that was constricting and inescapable and I just
had to hope that what ever it was, it was not gonna make me miserable. I
did not really understand that God was a person… until now.
While walking on that road, feeling all the realness, pain,
wounding, and failure of my story to that point and trying to just hold
myself together but feeling to weak to do so for long, I saw and heard
something that changed me. As I saw a young boy from our neighborhood
get so excited to see my own dad walking up to greet him, as if it were
the most exciting thing and happiest moment just to get to see and hug
another person, I realized that there was nothing purer or more
fulfilling than having that closeness and relationship. I thought that
nothing could be any more real and acute than the pain and hurt that I
had carried for much of my grownup life, but I was wrong…
As I stood taking in this revelation as this young boy and my dad
shared a simple hug, I felt something more real than anything I have
ever experienced. I felt a person standing right over my left shoulder
and an arm around me, and I heard a soft voice in my ear as if you
yourself were speaking right to me, and it said “Tim, I know what you
are feeling right now, because I feel it too, and I am with you.”
Now I do not tend to cry much, but I melted. I could not speak for a
good five minutes, and as I turned and continued walking along the
tears just streamed down my face. “What? You mean you feel pain and hurt
when I do? You are not just sitting on your golden throne on top of a
cloud looking down at me wishing that I would just get it together? You
are standing right next to me feeling the hurt of the things that hurt
me and are with me in this mess?”
This was the moment when I finally understood why God did what He
did two thousand years ago. This is when I realized what people meant
when they called Him their “Father.” It was because of this experience
that I can tell you with all honesty that a relationship with God is a
relationship with a real living person who feels, hurts, speaks,
listens, and above anything else, loves.
The reason I do what I do, not only in my job, but in the way I try
to live my life, is because you and every other person need to know that
He loves you so much regardless of what you do, but rather because of
who you are. His son or daughter to love, cherish, dote on, and have
relationship with. Everything that He does is to have a relationship
with you in which He does not rule you with an iron judgement, but
rather walk right along side you in the midst of your circumstances,
what ever they may be. That is why you and I are here. That is why the
world exists. That is why I live the way I live and do what I do.
That is Why.
