Worshiping the Experience
It can become easy for me to get focused on my feelings on the emotional experience I have of God. And of course, when I am blessed to have these feelings all is well. But what of the times when I don’t, when I feel alone and distant from God?
Well this past week I’ve been walking through a desert of spiritual dryness—failing to see God, to hear His voice, to even perceive His presence. I want to pray, but can’t find the words. I don’t want to talk to God, I want God! I think this is part of the reason God remains invisible to our human senses, for the most part, because He wants us to worship Him and not our feelings about Him or our experiences with Him. It’s like sex. Sex isn’t good because it feels good and brings us physical pleasure. Sex is good because of the person we are sharing ourselves with, the giving and receiving of each other in total union. At that moment, nothing else seems to matter, because our unity is complete. This is what our prayer should be like.
Longing for God
Faith requires more from us than our feelings and emotions, because we can actively choose to live it allowing us to transcend our human senses. It can seem like torture at times, to want God and not to have Him, or at least to feel like you don’t. The psalmist beautifully expresses this longing:
“O God, you are my God—it is you I seek! For you my body yearns; for you my soul thirsts, In a land parched, lifeless, and without water.”
~ Psalms 63:2
This desire for God pulls us out of, or rather, beyond where are our senses and emotions can take us. Recently, as I was experiencing this spiritual dryness I was on my way to church trying and failing to pray. When I looked up I noticed the sunset, the beauty of the sky in all its splendor. Now you might think I’m crazy, but I hadn’t seen a sunset in what seemed like years. And this was definitely the most beautiful sunset I’d ever seen. In fact, it moved me to tears. To know that such beauty exists, and on a daily basis, reminded me that God is always with me, but I’ve got to open my eyes, the eyes of my heart.
Transcending the Senses
In Adoro te Devote written by St. Thomas Aquinas, we find this truth:
“Taste, and touch, and vision, to discern Thee fail; Faith, that comes by hearing, pierces through the veil.”
Matt Maher’s translation of this line reads: “Faith will tell us Christ is present when your feeble senses fail.” I’m reminded of the scene in Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade. Standing on the edge of a cliff he reads his challenge: “Only a leap from the lion’s head will prove his worth”.
Faith calls us out of ourselves and into God. God wants you and I to “walk by faith” and believe me that first step is the hardest. But once you’ve begun the journey you’ll wonder why you ever doubted to begin with.