After I left her sitting at the little round top table, next to where I was seated for bagle and coffee, I began trying to think how many times I have tried to encourage someone with the assurance of God's nearness. I cannot even begin to estimate. I have remembered that in these last months it seems I have written not a few cards, trying to assure that; "God is near. God is standing with you." I believe, as a Christian, it is an astonishing attribute of the God I profess, to be THE "God of our refuge and strength," so writes the psalmist, "an ever-present help in trouble." Again, "The Lord is near," the apostle tells the Philippians, "Do not be anxious." To me, the One who draws near is a vital part of the story of Christianity, the One in which Christians understandably draw hope. Yet, I'm not ignorant of the fact that the same is not automatically hopeful true to everyone. I was reminded of this when my assurance of God's presence in the life of the struggling young lady at the coffee bar was met with her honest rejoinder: "Is that supposed to encourage me?"
I think I've figured out (puzzled) that nearness in and of itself is not assuring. I had forgotten this in my well-meaning, though knee-jerk truism. An essential ingredient in the assurance that comes from nearness is the person who is drawing near. The degree of comfort and assurance (or instruction and conviction) I believe is drawn from those near me and altogether contingent on who it is that has drawn near. Probably, for some folk, the thought that God is near resembles more a threat than a promise. My breakfast acquaintance's perception of God at that moment was perhaps closer to Julian Huxley's than King David's. For Huxley, God resembled "not a ruler, but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat." For I read in Psalm 73 that for David, God's nearness was clearly thought for his good.
So I'm going to write my theology of nearness. It seems to me that in Christian theology, the attributes of God are qualities which attempt to describe the God who has come near enough to reveal who God is. These attributes cannot be taken individually, removed from one another like garments in a great wardrobe; they are not traits that exist independently but simultaneously, at times in paradoxical mystery. God is both near us and "among us" as Isaiah writes; God is also far from us and beyond us—in knowledge, in grandeur, in immensity, in position. "Am I only a God nearby," declares the LORD, "and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?" declares the LORD. "Do not I fill heaven and earth?"
Further, I see that the One who dwells both among us and in the highest heavens is also according to Scripture good and wise and holy. The God of whose nearness I speak is infinite in being, glory, blessedness and perfection; all-sufficient, eternal, unchangeable, incomprehensible, everywhere present, almighty, knowing all things, most wise, most holy, most just, most merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth. I have picked that up from the Westminster Larger Catechism. There is no other God; God is wholly other.
I've begun to realize that it has been after the candid response from this particular young lady, how important it is to attempt to clarify what I mean—and whom I speak of—when I say that God is near; so my attempts will remind me that this is never a simple, casual knowledge understood. To everyone that I speak needs not only to know that God is near but that God is merciful, not only that God is holding them and their situation, but that God is good. When I speak of nearness - whoever needs to hear the "who" behind the promise, beyond the attribute. And I needed that candid reminder that morning. That the attributes I can study, the biblical promises to which I cling, the words I count on to comfort or restore, are pale in comparison and meaningful only because of the One they describe. When I share the promise that God is among us I need to intentionally visualize God almighty that is standing among us.
I realize it's the beginning of Christians around the world contemplating again the mystery of the Incarnation, the divine drawing near in human form. Yet, I know I'll run into those not so spiritually enthusiastic and/or skeptics. I need to be an encouragement to them in the fact that nearness is a claim worth deeper inquiry. Who is it who comes near, who rends the heavens to stand beside humanity, who stands at the door and knocks? Who is this God among us?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man who attested to the nearness of God though confined to a jail cell, depicted the one beside whom he lived and before whom he prayed as a quiet voice, gentle, persuasive, and patient. He prayed in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christmas Sermons:
"Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Share my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death. Come with me in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death."
Father, God, Your nearness means so much more to me than ever before. Now may You add Your grace through the Holy Spirit to embolden me in asking others: What if it is this God who hears our prayers, the one who walked in Jerusalem, the Christ who came among us? What if it is this God who is near? Amen
