What isn’t true about God…

I had myself as good as dead. I had skin cancer on my temple. I knew once the surgeon tried to cut it out, he’d find it had spread. I was going to die, and my new assignment from God? To keep the faith for those around me even as I encountered a God who totally threw me, one who was not what I ever thought He was, and one who would always pull the “I know better” card. In other words, I still see my God as I saw my own father, unworthy of trust.

It is hard to peel away the layers of what isn’t true. After all, our first caregivers give us our first impression of who God might be. If we are confused by them, hurt by them, betrayed by them, then what does this say about how we end up seeing God?

We have to start over. We have to wipe the board clean. We have to use the advantage given to us. What is that advantage? Our suffering! It opened doors in our thinking. Our pain shaped questions. We have to crawl inside and find those doorways, bring out those questions. We get to honor the part of ourselves that knew how we were treated was wrong. That part was right! That part knew better! That part was informed by God, the real one, the one whose strength we adopted and used to climb out and come to this very moment.

Yes, we begin there.

Reflection

Spend some time honoring the part of you that questioned. How is it that you knew how you were being treated was wrong? What knowledge planted within you told you this? Might this be what the Bible refers to as the “image and likeness” of God? (See Genesis 1:26-27.)

Prayer

Dear God, help me to stay with this truth that You are within me and have always been. Help me to realize all that this means — what it meant for me then and what it means for me now..