Author: Alicia Elder

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Belonging part 3 – fractured, fragmented and ineffective?

This morning I was reading Jesus’ prayer for his disciples in John chapter 17. It has taken me a long time to read this chapter. I have been here for weeks. It has been strange for nothing has genuinely struck me and yet I have felt unable to go on. Perhaps that is because I would prefer not to read what happens next? But I suspect that more has been at play.

As the third post in this series on belonging; I hope to bring something further to what we have previously discussed. In the first post, we discussed the yearning to belong, the need to truly meet with others and to prioritise the other in social situations. And Marion so beautifully developed this further here when she wrote about the need to recognise the truth that we do belong – to God, and to others because we belong to him.

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How to stand as the battle wages

We live in a physical, material world. A world that can be measured, seen, and observed. That we can experiment upon and understand. And that is all there is. Isn’t it?

However, such a notion is foreign to many, if not most, of the people who walk upon this earth. And for those who have done so for millennia. For these people, the spiritual and supernatural are as familiar as the air that we breathe. Life is not limited to the physical, rather the significance of the spiritual is understood and embraced. 

But for most of us who live in the West, this is not so.

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The dance of the trinity

I have always found the concept of the trinity hard to understand. Who is our God? How is He three and yet also one? Do I relate to God as Father? Or as Jesus, the Son? Or as the Holy Spirit? How do I interact with all three? Should I do so all at once or one at a time? And if I do, am I then understanding them as three rather than one? But then if I focus on the oneness do I then lose the three-ness? Above all, what does this mean in practice? And how does it affect me as a follower of this God?

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The lenses that we look through

A year or two ago, I listened to a sermon in which the way we see God was discussed. To be fair, I am not even sure if that was the main point of the message, but it struck me and stuck with me. The lens through which we see God clearly has profound ramifications. For it determines how we relate to Him, and also to others.

But what occurred to me then, and has sat with me ever since, is that identifying this lens is undoubtedly both challenging and complicated. For we see God through our eyes, our experience, prejudices, preconceptions, through what others have told us, what we have read and heard. Beyond doubt, all these things colour our perceptions. While we will never see perfectly, this is something we must be aware of, and seek, wherever possible, to overcome. For if we fail to do so, we may end up following a God who is not.

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The God of the impossible

I wonder if God has ever spoken the impossible to you. If he has given you a word, a picture, a vision, or a verse that was unmistakably from him. Where you were so sure that it was from His mouth and no other you could have bet your very life on it.

But then you look at your life, you look at the circumstances that surround you, and you question your sanity. You question your certainty. You doubt whether God could ever say something like that, to you.

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To kneel in the dust

Today I am struck yet again by the gentleness, compassion and humility of Jesus. I am still in John, and not much further on than when I wrote this post, for I don’t read the Bible quickly. I have done so in the past, I have skimmed large portions of Scripture rapidly. But, I find that approach hard to maintain, and in doing so, I am bombarded by so much that needs careful thought, prayer and consideration that I struggle to find anything to come away with. In the presence of so much to think about, I end up with little to hold on to.

Therefore, I have found that I have to take time. To sit, to dwell and to contemplate. So I move slowly. Sometimes I sit with the same few verses for days, maybe even weeks. I have learnt that it is okay to do this and to not feel guilty for not covering vast quantities of Scripture. But, instead, to let the Spirit speak to me where I am.

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Belonging

I love that word. It has the deep sense of home, of warmth, of togetherness. Being in a place and fitting in, somewhere which is mine. But not just mine for in this place there are others to whom it belongs as much as myself. This, I think, is a much better word than community. For we each live within communities that for the most part are dislocated, fractured, and separate – the very antithesis of belonging.

I have often felt like somehow I don’t fit. There are times when I stand in a group of people and feel foreign, strange and disconnected. It as if somehow everyone else shares a secret that I don’t know. That they all stand on common ground, but there is no room for me.

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The choices set before us

When we are very young, it seems that the world is before us with endless opportunities and possibilities. We can be anything we want. In theory at least. Though it must be acknowledged that so often in practice this is not the case. We are not to be constrained by gender, race, age or belief. All we must do is dream, strive, and it will be attained. I wonder if this is a gift for the young, for it is what drives them out and forward. And this is both necessary and essential.

As we move beyond this and grow at least a little older (and I am claiming no great age here, as I am fully aware that many of my readers are older than I). It becomes evident that we cannot do everything. We cannot fulfil every dream and follow every whim, for our choices are not endless. We become constrained, responsible, restricted. But could this also, somehow, be a gift?

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Thoughts and reason, but what about the imagination?

Years ago I stumbled across a relatively unknown essay by A.W. Tozer, entitled, ‘The sanctified imagination’. It is well worth reading, though somewhat challenging to find, I managed to track it down again here. This idea caught my attention, it held me and welcomed me as a thought that was both foreign and yet somehow familiar.

In my neck of the woods, we seem to be cerebral people. We live in our intellect, we debate, argue, refine, argue some more, we like to think well and like others to think that we think well. And, other methods of thought and being are somehow relegated to places of less importance. Do we feel? Maybe, but we must never be driven by our emotions. Do we imagine? Perhaps, but let’s not get lost in flights of fancy.

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