Think about a time when you struggled, when you suffered, when you strained to stay upright in a storm. Did you pray? Did you call out to God and ask him to walk with you along the hard path? If you did, was he very near to you, or was he some vague, abstract, last-ditch effort to get some help in a tough situation?
God suffered and died on a cross so that he can be very near to you when you stumble under the weight of your own crosses. He longs to console you and to be consoled by you. And yet, some people who fill a pew every Sunday and say grace before every dinner still don’t believe that Jesus yearns to have a personal relationship with each of them, individually.
But he does.
He wants to breathe with you, to keep pace with every beat of your heart. He wants you to share the details of your everyday life, and to fall into easy conversation with him as you go about your daily round. Like every meaningful friendship, he wants to spend the time it takes to be understood. Jesus wants you to know him nearly as well as he knows you. He is seeking to nurture a friendship that you can count on every day of your life and enjoy forever in heaven. When that relationship is built moment by moment and day by day throughout the course of your life, then he will be very near and very familiar when you call out in times of trouble.
God is not cold and distant and disinterested. He is not so detached that when you plead in despair, the call comes back void. You don’t have to utter a half-hearted prayer into the darkness. You can, instead, have an intimate conversation with a beloved friend who draws very near, who is warmth and light itself. God doesn’t have to orchestrate your life from afar; he can keep step with you. He wants to keep step with you, chatting together all along the way.
You worry that you can’t possibly deserve a friendship like that. You can’t. None of us do. But this isn’t a merit-based friendship. It’s the burning desire of the heart of God. He wants to offer undeserved, unconditional love. It seems so unfathomable to some of us. But it’s true.
“No longer do I call you servants… but I have called you friends.”
He calls you friend, but do you answer to the call?
He is God. He yearns for your nearness, for the consolation of your friendship. It’s hard to imagine that God is consoled by us, but he is. He wants to be with us, to be close to us. He created us to be truly with him. We give assent to this truth in our heads; we teach it to our children, parroting the catechism back as we were once taught:
Who made you?
God made me.
Why did he make you?
To know, love, and serve him in this life, and to live with him forever in heaven.
Sometimes we get caught up in the serving and the striving, and we neglect the knowing and the loving.
We were made to know him and to love him, and we are assured that he, in turn, knows us and loves us–deeply, personally, intimately.
Sit with him, in the word and in the sacrament. Get to know him there. Let him love you there. And love him back. Take him with you. Converse with him throughout your day, calling him to mind and heart about all matters big and small.
Then, when the storms come — and they will come — you will call out to someone dear and familiar, and he will be very near to you, indeed.
Foss, whose website is takeupandread.org, writes from Connecticut.
