God in the Box

God I want to know You.

Not the version of You I was told about since I was a tot.

Not the one that I have used to “keep myself in line.”

Not the vending-machine god that I’ve pursued for my own sake.

But You, God.

The real You.

I just want to know You.

I have a feeling that we’ve all gotten You wrong for as long as You breathed life into us.

We’ve made You into our image.

We can’t help it. We are suffering. We are broken. We have so many limitations. We are human.

We desperately want a God who fits into a neat little box that we can understand and control. That’s happened since ancient times, when we literally put You in a box of wood, overlaid with gold and carried You around with poles and used You to fight our battles and convinced all the people around us that You were inside that box.

Funny thing?!? You weren’t. No matter how hard we tried to put You there and parade You around like we owned You.

We still do it.

We create constructs and circles and books and doctrines and contracts and churches and tell ourselves that You fit into those places. We keep others out of when their version of our god doesn’t match. We love having You in our neat and very small boxes. Ones we can control. Ones where we belong. Ones where we feel safe.

It’s so easy for us.

But I don’t want the easy way anymore.

I want the path that leads me to You.

The real You.

Even if it’s wild and full of adventure.

Or twisty-turny and complicated.

Or confusing and filled with more questions than answers.

The God who does not fit in carefully constructed and horribly restricted and finite boxes.

I’m a little nervous. How could I not be?

This is new territory for me.

But it’s not the same nervous where I’m wondering how it’s all going to fall apart and I’m going to be swept away right along with it.

It’s the hopeful butterfly-in-my-stomach kind.

The one where I might not belong to groups and systems that make me feel good inside.

The one where You live way outside of the box.

The one where it’s the start of a grand adventure of goodness and love and intimacy and creativity and all the fullness of life.

The one where You can be You and I can be me.

*Image from Raiders of the Lost Ark*