Welcome
Autobiography
God
in All Things
- Preface
- Chapter
1
Oh God,
Why?
- Preface
- Chapter
1 - 6
Oh God, Why?
Preface
‘Think of the fish we used to eat free in Egypt,
the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic! Here we are, wasting
away, stripped of everything: there is nothing for us but manna to look
at’ (Numbers 11:5–6).
For forty years the Israelites grumbled their way through the wilderness
into the Promised Land, dissatisfied not only with their diet and with
their leader, Moses, but also with God, who was ultimately responsible.
They decided to reject him and create a more biddable God, a golden calf!
This long and bruising passing-over from the slavery of Egypt to the freedom
of the Promised Land was celebrated every year in the Jewish feast of
Passover. It was not just commemoration of a past event, but also celebration
of a present reality, for God, who had welded the Jews into a nation through
the trials of the wilderness, was the God of ‘the now’, which
is the meaning of ‘eternal God’. ‘For the mountains
may depart, the hills be shaken, but my love for you will never leave
you and my covenant of peace with you will never be shaken, says Yahweh
who takes pity on you’ (Isaiah 54:10).
Having reached the Promised Land, in spite of all their grumbles and rebellion,
the Jewish people realized that life, even with lots of milk and honey,
and no doubt with an abundance of leeks, cucumbers and garlic, too, could
still be nasty, brutish and short, and that their deliverance from Egypt
was only a part of God’s promise, not its fulfilment. Once in the
Promised Land, their trials continued, the kingdom divided, the people
were exiled, Jerusalem was devastated. Whatever trials they subsequently
endured, the Jews interpreted them in the light of their liberation from
Egypt.
The same God was still with them, leading them through their wilderness,
as he had led their ancestors through the desert, into the Promised Land.
Centuries later, Isaiah reminds the exiled people, ‘Yes, people
of Zion, you will live in Jerusalem and weep no more. He will be gracious
to you when he hears your cry; when he hears he will answer. When the
Lord has given you the bread of suffering and the water of distress, he
who is your teacher will hide no longer, and you will see your teacher
with your own eyes. Whether you turn to right or left, your ears will
hear these words behind you, “This is the way, follow it”.
You will regard your silvered idols and gilded images as unclean. You
will throw them away like the polluted things they are, shouting after
them, “Good riddance!”’ (Isaiah 30:19–22). God
is constantly bringing his people, in spite of their grumbles, out of
slavery through the wilderness into the Promised Land.
As Christians, we also celebrate the Passover journey and see it as a
way of understanding our own lives. We believe that in Jesus God has fulfilled
his promise to lead us out of slavery into the Promised Land. The promise,
first made to the Jewish people, is a promise for all peoples of all times
and nations. In Jesus God has so identified himself with us, that, whoever
we are, whatever we do to one another, we do also to him. God is, in St
Augustine’s words, ‘Nearer to me than I am to myself’.
Jesus lived, suffered, died and is risen again, but ‘...the Spirit
of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you’ (Romans
8:11). For the Christian, Jesus is the Passover. Our life is a journey
with him, through life till death. In death life is changed, not ended,
for in death, as it states in a Eucharistic prayer: ‘We shall see
you, our God, as you are. We shall become like you and delight in you
forever through Christ our Lord, from whom all good things come’
(Roman Missal). Our life is a journey in and with Christ, a liberation
from slavery into the freedom of God.
In this book, we shall be looking at this notion of journey as a way of
understanding the meaning of our own lives, our grumbles and discontent,
our pain and sadness, our hopes and dreams.
The American philosopher Thoreau once wrote, ‘The mass of men lead
lives of quiet desperation’, and he must have meant women as well.
All of us, believers and atheists, have to find some purpose in life.
Our purpose may be to ‘eat, drink and be merry’, or we may
think ‘I must acquire as much as possible’, or ‘I must
learn to know, love and serve God’. Whatever our purpose, we soon
discover that circumstances thwart us most of the time. Those dedicated
to eating and drinking soon suffer indigestion, or worse, and lose their
merriment. The money-getters cannot get enough, or may go bankrupt. The
fervently religious discover, like the Israelites, that God is not very
comfortable to live with, seems profoundly deaf and uncaring of his chosen
ones. So we try to alter the circumstances, the eaters and drinkers trying
AlkaSeltzers, or health farms, or surgery; the money-getters try to change
or bend the rules to recoup their losses; and the believers either switch
their allegiance to atheism or, like the Israelites, fashion a God more
to their own liking. But circumstances have an inexorable quality and
defeat us in the end, so we continue living ‘lives of quiet desperation’.
If we can begin to see our lives as a journey with Christ to God, who
loves us with a love which goes beyond all our thinking and imagining,
then the frustrating journey of quiet desperation begins to change. The
circumstances remain the same, but we interpret them differently. Now
we see them as the nudgings of God, who takes pity on us, urging us to
change direction on our journey. In traditional terminology, this change
of perception is called penance, or repentance. In Greek, the word is
metanoia and it means a change of mind and heart.
This book was originally a Lent book, with the subtitle ‘A journey
through Lent for bruised pilgrims’. But that journey is symbolic
of the journey through life, which begins at our conception, and continues
until death.
There are times for taking our bearings on the journey, so that we can
continue on our way less frustrated and more at peace, less grumpy and
more content, less downcast and more joyful. The purpose of doing this
is to set us free from our self-imposed slavery, to enable us to live
more fully and to discover the joy of God which Christ promised to give
to his followers.
My thanks to Brian McClorry SJ for his helpful corrections and suggestions,
to Shelagh Brown of the Bible Reading Fellowship for her encouragement
and editing, and to Ursula Burton and Michael Paterson SJ for their helpful
comments.