PROMPTS & PRACTICES | “KNOW” GOD
In the next several weeks, I will be featuring what I wrote under Postscript: Prompts and Practices for my upcoming book. For each chapter, I highlight three prompts and corresponding practices.
God is drawing all creation to say yes (or multiple yes-es) to God’s infinite and non-possessive love. God cannot be or do anything other than love, for God is love. God cannot deny God. This love of God, which is “the ground of being” according to Paul Tillich, rules the heavens and the earth beyond any human understanding. Love is present and available at all times, as God is. We are to join God in making God’s love more accessible and understandable to all creation.
Jesus laid out the Great Commandment, summarizing the Old Testament. The call to love God, love oneself, and love our neighbors serves both as a map and compass for navigating life. These three loves, which are really one same love, instruct how to live well as God’s children in specificity and practicality. Love also is both the intention and action. Love must have both elements; otherwise, it falls short of the love that God intends.
Moving from a conceptual and theoretical framework to a practical and concrete one, I would like to further reflect as well as share a few practices I have embraced over the years that have helped me. I am not blindly assuming that these will also help you. You are most welcome to tweak and change these practices to discover what works for you. That is what is important here. I have generally, and thus not perfectly, divided the prompts and practices under the four categories corresponding to the chapters of the book: Loving God, Loving Oneself, Loving Our Neighbors, and Communion.
“Know” God
Knowing God perfectly is impossible. Knowing God personally is the invitation here. This personal and subjective knowing of God is a limited and imperfect knowing which breeds humility and compassion. But God seems perfectly okay with our imperfect knowing. God expects that, it seems. This grants us the kind of freedom and latitude to explore our subjective and experiential knowledge of God in our life.
We also are a by-product of our time and culture. We are cultural beings trapped in time and space. The Bible is also a product of time and culture. Knowing God through the Scriptures thus is both the careful work of understanding both the culture and context of the Bible as well as ours. Allowing the conversations to flow out of that process to guide and light our paths of life is the necessary work for us all. Ultimately, we get to know God by knowing Jesus and Jesus’ God. Jesus holds the hermeneutical key to our journey of knowing God.
We also get to know God by “knowing” the magnificent nature of God’s creation, as well as ourselves as God’s magnificent creation.
Practices
Read, study, and reflect on the Scriptures including a portion of the gospels every day. Be also a student of the Bible’s cultures as well as ours. Don’t be afraid to go beyond your own tradition and read widely and discern.
Write down and reflect on your personal life history regarding how God has been active in guiding and leading your life. What are your own “stones of remembrance?” Do you recognize any discernible patterns of how God has come to you over and over again?
How have you experienced God’s unconditional forgiveness and grace in your life? Reflect and write a journal entry.
Create your own growing list of gratitude toward God. Be specific and write down as many as you can remember going as far back as you can go. Then give each gratitude a name. These are your very own treasure chest of God’s goodness. Also, notice the emotions you feel by thinking through the list.