Does the title of this blog jar with you? How often do we think we should be useful? should be “doing something worthwhile”? Even with God we think we ought to be useful – even when we stop to pray we think it should be useful and praying about stuff to help God with their sorting out of the world.
Now I am not against social justice or supporting and helping other people. I fully agree with James’ words that “faith without works is dead” [James 2:26] but I do think, as much as that means working with God and supporting people and nature and issues that need support, I think it also means a faith that works in the knowing there is enough and that when I pray “God’s will be done” that I have changed something. That change doesn’t happen because I’m amazing but because I believe God is amazing.
I have really been enjoying this latest run of meditations from Henri Nouwen looking at solitude with God. And it is in here that he explores the ideas of us emptying ourselves of everything as we come before God, knowing God has enough for us, but also is great enough to sort the whole world out by themselves.
In James’s example as well as saying about when you see someone hungry or in need you help them, the example he uses at the end is Rahab. Rahab believes that the God of the Israelites is greater than the gods of her people so, as well as hiding the spies, also ties a red cord to her window so that she gets rescued and becomes part of the Israelite nation. So more than just doing good things!
In Nouwen’s meditations he says how we need to empty ourselves of everything to truly be with God. That also means all our anxieties and worries. I think sometimes when we come to God to pray about something we come with it as an anxiety so that when we do pray about it we are praying from a place of nervousness or fear. We are not praying from a place of openness and trust. So we often pray “God, can you just do x,y&z” rather than “Amazing God I trust you and place this situation into your hands to do as I know you know best” and then leave it with God.
Jesus said to his followers that he now called them friends not servants [John 15:15] which means he now saw them as people to hang out not to tell them what to do, or them to ask things of him. I met with a friend the other day. Whilst we were together we chatted, shared our lives, suggested supportive things to each other, but on the whole just unloaded a bit. At the end she said she enjoyed being with me because she could say things to me that she would like to say to the people concerned but struggled to say. She isn’t going to now say those things to the people we were talking about but she says she now feels like she can deal with the situation. I know that I feel the same too when I’m with friends I can be myself with. Like I’ve left a bit of something that was on my mind with them. Not for them to fix but because they are my friends.
I think that is a bit like God wants. Not for us to come to God to get them to sort out things but for us to unload, to empty ourselves but then we can sit in companionable silence with God because we are empty. And we can then know that actually God, the Creator of the Universe, doesn’t want to be with us because we can help them with their plans for humanity but so that we can know how “useless” we are before them but how loved we are.
Nouwen also believes that as we empty ourselves of our need to be useful so we give more room for others – friends, family and enemies – to join with us and to sit with us and our amazing God. He believes that when we are trying to be “useful” to God we try to control the situation too much.
In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus said “”Focus your light within us and create your reign of unity now. Your will come true in the universe [all that vibrates] just as on earth [all that is material]” [Aramaic version] or “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Empty ourselves of mithering at God and open ourselves up to being loved for our uselessness by the awesome creator of the Universe who was and is and is to come!
Aspirational Adventures 