A Ramble about the Humility of God

As I have struggled through meditation, I had found it harder and harder to reach the point of awareness of His presence. I fought through, but each time it became harder, and then for several weeks, it seemed completely fruitless. I struggled, I cried out internally, and nothing.

I felt lost and confused. Why had He slipped through my fingers when I reached out to grasp Him? Didn't He want me coming closer to Him? Where was He? I knew He surrounded me, I knew that He was in everything and everywhere and that there was nowhere I could go where He was not. So why did I feel so cut off?

He told me.

I sought control of Him. I sought the awareness of His presence in order to change myself into something "better". I sought union with Him to advance my own twisted reason and to propitiate my fear of being less than by "being better than" spiritually. He refused to be a part of my self-seeking and self-advancement. It was as simple as that.

I have a deep seated fear that everyone else is better than I am in some way, and my psyche seems to react by trying to, consciously or unconsciously, be better than everyone else. I seek to control and manipulate everything around me to achieve the acquisition of my own desires or illusions. Whether it be the desire for a certain object such as a DVD or book, or the illusion of seeing myself as a good or spiritual person. I sought to run from what I am, and to become something I am not. Instead of accepting myself as myself, warts and all, I was rejecting myself in favor of a pleasant delusion. Instead of embracing the cross, I was running from it yelling "I embrace you!"

When I realized this, I sat in silence. And then I became aware of His presence. It was not imposing. He was not overwhelming. He was quiet. He was soft, and gentle. He was concerned, and it felt as when a friend of mine was giving me a hug from behind. As I dwelt on this I became aware of the stark contrast between Him and myself and the disdain which this controlling part of myself felt for His "softness". This part of me was hard, proud, dominating, and the total antithesis of Him. It honestly didn't know what to do with Him. God in this manner did not force Himself on me, but waited for me to sit still. He did not strike me as awe-inspiring, but "lowly".

God felt no need to prove or show His dominance to me. Almighty God was as soft and gentle as, well... a small animal. I don't know why, but that is the term which comes to mind. I wanted the awareness of the presence of God, and instead of awe-inspiring power, I got soft and gentle like someone's toothless old great-grandfather.

As I said above, this hard controlling part of me didn't know what to do with it. It felt, well... pathetic actually, and totally uncontrolling, even though I knew He had full control of everything. And then my thoughts drifted onto His humility. It's not an aspect of God which we often think about or preach on.

He surrounds us constantly, yet most of the time makes no visible effort to remind us of that fact. We often ignore Him far more than anyone else and talk about Him as if He weren't in the room with us. Even we who profess not only belief and faith in Him, but also love, often go whole days not even noticing Him or acting as if He were present. He doesn't respond in anger. He doesn't seek to prove how much better than we are He is. He lets us go, and takes no offense. He who has ultimate control chooses not to wield it in that way. And here I who have no real control over anything am seeking to control Him for my own selfish means.

I suppose that the real first step in a relationship is to really notice the other person, instead of going throughout the day pretending that they don't exist except for your own selfish goals. It's to really see them for who they are, and not for what you can get out of them.

Unlike myself, God is totally devoid of pride and selfish ambition. When I became aware of His presence in this way, I realized how truly ridiculous my own hardness was, and how maligning it was especially to Him.