Thoughtful About . . . My God

by Roseanna White | Dec 5, 2013 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized

In reading through the Old Testament again, I keep noticing something I noted first several years ago. So often, God reveals His power to the world, and not just to the Israelites. He demonstrates his majesty to people great and small from all the nations.

I love reading about those cases. I love reading how people who were raised with the pantheon of gods and idols go wide-eyed in the face of the all-powerful Yahweh. I love reading about how they fall to their knees before the prophets.

But so often their words are the same. “I know that your God is supreme,” they’ll say.

Your God.

They recognize His omnipotence…but rarely do they claim Him as theirs. When they do, it’s striking. When Ruth proclaims, “Your God shall be my God,” that’s huge. When a man returns to his own land determined to worship the Lord, that’s really worth getting excited about. Because for a believer in many gods to grant that one is the most powerful…meh. It almost rates as a “so what?” But to serve Him–to count themselves as one of His children–that requires a complete shift in their thinking. God does not want to be served along with others. He wants to reign alone in our hearts. So when He is our God, my God, that means none other can claim the same.

David Presents the Head of Goliath to King Saulby Rembrandt, circa 1627

These pronouns really struck me when reading about King Saul and David. Never once does Saul call the Lord his God or his Lord. He refers to Him instead as David’s God, or as the God of their fathers. Yet in the same passages, we see David crying out to Yahweh with those personal pronouns.

There are many nuances to David’s story that I probably don’t understand. But when I noticed this, it made a light go on in my head. That, right there, is a perfect illustration of where Saul failed and David succeeded. Whatever other successes or failures each had, the real issues of their reigns came down to serving the Lord.

To Saul, He remained always distant. He was someone else’s Lord. To be feared but not understood. To be heard from the mouth of a prophet, but who Saul never approached himself.

Then there’s David. To David, God was an ever-present Father. He was savior and friend. David called on Him directly, every hour, throwing himself at the feet of the Almighty as a child will fall into the lap of a parent. Knowing that though chastisement will come when he does wrong, it will be tempered, always with love.

David knew God. David loved God. He was his.

There’s a passage in Jewel of Persia where Kasia notices this. Where Xerxes, king of all Persia, of all the world, it seems, recognizes the full power of her God…but still calls him hers. In that moment, she sees it as a step along the road. He at least sees Him. But when will he call the Lord his?

In today’s world, we tend not to look at things in the way they did back then. People don’t go around talking about my God versus your God very often. People don’t serve (knowingly, that is) the Baals. But oh-so-often they worship their own creations. Their idea of God, or of some creator being they force into their own image. They serve their own desires, their own wants, their own lusts. Maybe they pay lip service to that God they see in church. Maybe they toss around the words God and Jesus.

But is He theirs?

Is He ours? I pray so. I pray that we don’t look upon Him as distant, as better known and better loved and loving someone else. I pray I never look at another believer and think God loves him better…he knows God better. Because then I’ll start to think of Lord as belonging more to that other person than to me.

I may be weaker. I may be of lesser faith. I may be a lot of things that need shored up and strengthened. But may I always know this–He is mine, and I am His. Our relationship is like no one else’s.

And that’s exactly as it should be.

Thoughtful About . . . Legacies

by Roseanna White | Nov 21, 2013 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized

On Sunday, I had the pleasure of attending my great-grandmother’s 100th birthday party. Most of the family was there, including some of her great-nieces and nephews that I’ve never even met. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to come and celebrate this amazing milestone.

I admit it–I didn’t want to leave home so early that day. I was in a writing groove, and Rowyn had been under the weather the day before, and I was afraid he’d crash back into exhausted at the party. I didn’t want to prepare a dish, I didn’t want to stop writing. But of course, I did. And oh, how glad I was.

Because as I sat in a metal folding chair beside my mother and sister, my kids right in front of me playing with the gourds used as decoration, I listened to the stories everyone told of this woman I’ve known all my life. And I realized I’m a part of a legacy.

Over and again people told the same stories. The stories of how she loved–and how she loved all, without distinction, without bias, without favoritism.

(Grandma says, “Well, you’re all just swell!”)

Stories of how Grandma’s old house was always an oasis of safety, a place everyone loved so much that we didn’t mind imitating sardines on Christmas Eve to get to spend time there.

(Grandma says, “It isn’t as big as I remember, is it?”)

Stories of how she always, always welcomed each addition to the family, whether through marriage or birth or adoption, with the exact same love and embrace as she had her own children, always remembered each one, always took care that they all received the same consideration.

(Grandma says, tearfully, “Thank you all so much for all your beautiful kids. Welcome to the family.”)

And my dad, tears in his eyes, reminded us all of the passage in one of Paul’s letters where he says, “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ.” To us, Dad said, “We can say ‘imitate Grandma, as she imitates Christ.’ She has always been a shining example of Jesus’s love for us.”

I don’t know what my legacy will be. I don’t know what people will remember me for. I don’t know how many would gather to celebrate a milestone with me. I certainly don’t know what milestones I’ll reach in this life.

But whatever age, whatever place in life, whatever people cross my path, I pray I can share in my grandmother’s legacy. I pray that they see even a morsel of her strength and goodness and kindness in me.

I pray, with tears in my eyes, that I can be like Grandma.