I cannot begin to estimate how many times I've needed someone to or attempted, myself, to encourage someone with the assurance of God's nearness: God is with you, Bill. Or, God is near, my friend. At times; God is among us. As a Christian, it is an astonishing attribute of the God I profess, a comforting attribute which voices long before my own confessed: "God is my refuge and strength," writes the psalmist, "an ever-present help in trouble." "The Lord is near," the apostle tells the Philippians, "Do not be anxious," in chapter four. Once again, I testify to The One drawing near is a vital part of the story of my faith, Christianity, and one in which believers understandably draw hope. On the other hand, there have been certain junctures of my journey that drawing on that hope, has not come automatically. I was reminded of this, a week or so ago, at breakfast, when I met a brand-new friend. Being left at the table at which we were seated and into the forty-five minutes of getting acquainted, dripping with candor, he shared a tremendous grief he has been experiencing over the past eight years. My speaking assurance of the presence of God in the life of my new struggling friend was met with his honest rejoinder: "Is that supposed to encourage me?"
I instantly thought I knew what was going though his mind because I've experienced when nearness in and of itself is not totally assuring. I had forgotten this in my well-meaning, though knee-jerk truism. My experience has been that one of the essential ingredients in the assurance that comes from nearness is the individual who is drawing near, at that moment. The degree of comfort and assurance (or instruction and conviction) I draw from those near me is wholly contingent on who it is that has come alone side. For some, that God is near resembles more of a threat than a promise. My friend'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 David, I understand that God's nearness was clearly for his good. (cf. Psalm 73:28).
So, sitting here, ruminating and outlining the draft for the entry I sense the need to ask the question: who is it that I as a believer, believe is near? And what does this even mean?
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 vast closet of clothes; they are not traits that exist independently but simultaneously, at times in paradoxical mystery. Isaiah finds God is both near us and "among us;" 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, according to Scripture, the One who dwells both with me and in the highest heavens is also good and wise and holy. I also hade forgotten until reminded of the excerpted from the Westminster Larger Catechism; the God of whose nearness Christians 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. All this leads me to believing the fact: like this God there is no other; God is wholly other.
These last days after the candid response from my friend, I'm realizing how important it is to attempt to clarify what I mean—and whom I speak of—when I say that God is near; my attempts will remind me that this is never a simple, casual knowledge understood. Just like me, at times, my friend needed not only to know that God is near but that God is merciful, not only that God is holding him and his situation, but that God is good. He needed to hear the "Who" behind the promise, beyond the attribute. And I needed the candid reminder that the attributes I can study, the biblical promises I cling to, the words I count on to comfort or restore, are pale in comparison and meaningful only because of the One they describe. The promise that God is among us is only promising because it is this God who is among us.
I'm going to make it an intentional point to revisit this nearness business with my friend and provide him brotherly love, compassion, and the opportunity to contemplate the mysterious questions of The Who is it that comes near, The Who that rends the heavens to stand beside him, The Who that stands at the door and knocks? Who is this God that sits with us at the table, when we work in our gardens, hold our wife's hand, watching our grandchildren's accomplishments, and, in his case, lay his head on the pillow after a long laborious day without his "sidekick," son?
I trust that I will never forget the life of 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:
"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." Amen
