Exodus 17:7 He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
I hear this question often, whether video-taping a lecture, in a group Bible Study, sometimes when meeting with a directee and sometimes in my own heart. “Is the Lord with me or not?” This question revisits the hearts of many.
In Romans Paul tells us we are all without excuse. There is no excuse for not knowing God. Think of the implications of that statement. We know, even if we can’t understand why we know, we just do.
Note that Paul doesn’t write we know because we saw a missionary or went to church. We are all accountable because God placed a part of God within each and every one of us that cries out to be restored and re-united to God. This part of God within us is far beyond our religious and scientific attempts at explanation; invisible but evident, in the world, yet outside the world … and closer than our mate.
The people who live in this world fall into one of three groups; those who deny God, God seekers and probably the majority of us belong to the group I call, “the other.” Those in denial and those who are supposedly delusional should be able to get along peacefully, if it were not for, “the other.”
“The other” are those who claim to know God, love God, live for God, and yet they are still pointing fingers and living below their own expectations for others.
Whatever we believe or whatever we deny does not negate the fact that we move closer to God when we move closer to one another; not when we allow culture, success or lack of success, fear or resentment to come between us.
The mystic sits in quiet, hungering for the indefinable God. The closer the mystic moves to God the closer he or she will move toward others. The scientist strives to be objective; analyzing and measuring the empirical, working for answers.
“The other” makes space for no one but those who think the same, but those in denial, as well as the so called delusional, can make space for each other. When we make space for each other, God will be in the midst.
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