Keeping Company

“. . . I want you to know that I think You’re cruel.”

A character in the novel I’m reading with my 8^th graders says this. Here’s the kicker: he’s saying it to God. Read the full quote:

I chose You, and I can’t alter that now, but I want You to know that I think You’re cruel, just like the farmer here and Carlo and all that belong to them. And I suppose You’ll never help me again, even if I do have some help still to come, because You’re tired of me. I’m sorry I didn’t choose a better God.

Yep. That’s harsh. I asked my students if it made any of them feel uncomfortable. A couple meekly raised their hands . . . but I was confident they weren’t the only ones.

My pastor talked about Thomas a couple weeks ago. The poor guy gets a bad rap. Yeah, he wasn’t there when Jesus came the first time. Yeah, he didn’t believe what the others were telling him. But you know, give the man credit for hanging around and being there for the second showing. He may have doubted, but he at least stayed in the conversation.

That’s one thing I like about this prayer David prays in I Am David. He’s praying. He’s not griping to someone else. He’s not grumbling in his heart. He tells God exactly what he’s thinking and feeling – he stays in the conversation.

After reading this passage in class, I told my students that I’ve been in this place before – angry at God and feeling like he did me wrong. And I told them that, while I pray none of them have to experience those feelings someday, there’s a good chance they will. Life is hard, and God’s ways don’t always make sense to us. And I hope, I told them, when that day comes that you will keep talking to God about it.

I said similar words online to a family member recently. Go ahead and yell at God. Cuss at him. Whatever. Say it all to him so he has a chance to answer back. Because he wants to hear you express your heart in words, even when your heart and words are ugly. And he wants to answer back.

Communication is so important. We know that’s true with humans, and we still don’t act on that truth the way we should. But it’s true with God, also. Relationships require communication – and intimate relationships require a particular type of communication: conversation. The root word there is Latin, and it means “to keep company with”. God doesn’t just want our obedience and submission and service. He wants our company; he wants to converse with us.

I recently discovered a new book: Hearing God by Dallas Willard . . . and I’m DEVOURING it. Not ready to comment more on it yet because it’s all still percolating in me. But I’ve felt it deep in my soul for a while that this communication with the Almighty just has to be more than simply making a prayer-speech to him once in a while. It’s got to be conversational – it’s supposed to be conversational – give and take, speak and listen, back and forth. The praise and the confession -- but also the complaints, the questions, the chuckles. Conversing. That’s what God wants, so it’s what I want, too.

A truth I’m celebrating this Eastertide: Easter means I can now keep company with God.

And a task I’m embracing as a result: making that time with him as genuine, intimate, frequent, and conversational as it can be.