Looking for God in all the wrong places

Photo of the Sea of Galilee today as a storm approaches.

While the world weeps today, we could be singing in joy tomorrow.  

Humanity is rushing like a vast river over the falls, crashing on the rocks below.  Swept along, we bob around looking for that tree limb on which to grasp, to hold us, and lift us up out of the cresting waters.  But, there is no tree limb, there is nothing to grasp.  It seems everywhere we look, everything we listen to, every news cast, ever new age idea, every self help gimmick is like a loose limb that we reach for only to find that it too is unsecured leaving us to flounder again and again.  

These are tempestuous times - especially for those in third world nations who have no food, no clean water, at the mercy of corrupt governments that rob food supplies donated by foreign nations in exchange for weapons. We are all like lambs watching and waiting for our own demise.  

But, this blog post is about hope as is this entire blog. So where is the hope? As I wrote the above paragraphs, my heart sank, weighed down by the harsh reality of our times.  What fragile hope is there really for us?  Has God abandoned us, forsaken us, left us to our own undoing?

All religions have promised us a savior, a powerful warrior who would save us in times of trouble. 

Of the heavy Hebrew scriptures, Habakkuk is among the sternest.  It is a prophesy of warning to the Hebrew people that their ways have led them away from God, leaving them unprotected and vulnerable to the Babylonians, a "ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own.  They are a feared and dreaded people, they are a law to themselves...."   

As as global family, we look at the current decline in nations, most recently Ireland has looked to the European Union for a bail out, following Greece who was precariously rescued last year, we wonder, "where is God in this tidal wave waiting on the horizon?"

Throughout our rapacious history, when we faced certain destruction, we looked to God as a merciful and compassionate father to dole out rescue and prosperity at our request.  We looked to the "heavens" for rescue.  We pleaded and begged, as children, to a stern father.  Sometimes, actually most times, we met our deserved outcome.  Have we been looking for God in all the wrong places?  

As naive children, we sought God outside ourselves, cringing powerlessly in fear of punishment, often stealing power from each other because we were blind to its presence deep within us. Is that how God created us? 

When I look carefully at the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, it seems that it is not how God is. I think today, as we teeter on a possible brink of destruction, we need to revise our worldview of God in order to find God and access God's infinite resource of power and vision and life that was mysteriously buried within us at our creation, waiting for the time when we would wisely seek God where God can be found - waiting patiently and lovingly for us to look within our own hearts, navigate our own phantasmal depths to find God.

Change begins with a firm commitment to and redirection of focus, away from a punitive father-figure to a loving, all powerful creator who is imbued within us, alive within our own being, as bone of His bone, blood of His blood and spirit of His spirit.

In my last blog, I suggested the "temple" is a metaphor, a parabolic image of the interior soul of man.  God's temple is within us, as Jesus said the kingdom of God is within us (Luke).  "Did the ancient Jews know this?"  I wondered.

In Habakkuk, wedged between Habakkuk's lamentation and God's response are some key words that jumped out at me, again reminding me that we have been looking for God's coast guard while on the tempestuous seas of these stormy times, rather than finding within us the power - yes, THE POWER - to lift up and out of the enormously strong magnetic gravitational pull of these godless materialistic times that are drawing us away from our own power, away from God within.

"Woe to him who says to wood, "Come to life" or to lifeless stone, "Wake up!"  Can it give guidance?  It is covered with gold and silver, there is no breath in it.  

But the Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth be silent before him."  

(Habakkuk 2:19-20)

After reading this scripture, suddenly (and interestingly) the image of Jesus asleep in the back of the boat awakened in my heart.  Just as the wood, silver and gold, the boat cannot save. The boat, the ancient symbol for the church, cannot save us.  The church cannot save us any more than all the material wealth, the fortress of your house, the security of your job.  Nothing and no institution or government can save us. Only the Power of Christ, God within us, can save us.  Only God, who waits within your heart, which is God's holy temple, can silence the storms around you, around us.  (Mark 4: 35-41)

I have seen people threatened with dire circumstances, extreme poverty, stage 4 cancers, at risk of losing their homes and their lives, find an awesome inner strength and with that strength, come through their challenges.  In that moment of absolute desperation and need, they have turned to God within them and found the strength to tap into a power beyond anything this world can offer to support and sustain them.  Even in the face of certain death, as they surrender to God within, and accept whatever may befall them, even praise and sing hymns of great praise and love to God, all that threatened them shrinks away - the earth does grow silent before the Great God of creation who moves upon their inner spiritual seas, and calms the storm.  With the storm now calmed, life can and often does return.

And, just one more thought.  As we've so often heard said, united, we stand, divided we fall are words that will take us the distance, through the finish line, into the winning lineup forever.  Familiar words that Abraham Lincoln spoke to the nation at the outbreak of the Civil War, and words spoken by Jesus intended with a much deeper, mystical meaning.

If one person realizes that the strength and power of heaven is within his grasp, as close as his own heart, he is saved and yet the whole world may perish.  But, if whole communities, even nations, entire church, temple, mosque and ashram communities realize that the power of heaven is within them and cast away their love of stuff and external power, their fear of each other in order to reach courageously within their inner temples with praise, wonder, love and adoration of God, together we may be able to damn the raging river that threatens our world today. 

As Judaism's Yom Kippur and Islam's Eid el-Adha wane, and Christmas approaches, we have a beautiful opportunity - as a global community - to open our hearts to each other with the full intention of honoring God who reigns in the temple of the other.  It is in stepping out of our own hermitage, risking everything, to love another that we draw on the power of God within our own temple.  In that reach, God is extended, and the storm is calmed, little by little, until the peace of God pervades and suffuses our world, uniting us, healing us together.

There is nothing outside you that can save you.  Only the power and love of God within His holy temple, within your own human heart, can save you and us - all of us.