I’m in the Lord’s army

Someone asked me the other day whether I have a sense that God loves me and delights in me. I thought hard about it. Then said, “No.” I don’t really feel that God loves me. I know he loves me. It makes perfect theological sense. I see evidence of his love for me, but my image of God is not one where he loves me and delights in me. I view God more as a General of some spiritual army and I’m one of the soldiers. We’re like officers in the army and our wills and our faculties and talents are the soldiers, and God has given us command over them. This makes a lot of sense to me. But I’ve started to question it.

Several months ago, we started doing something called contingency play with our daughter. We would tie one end of a ribbon to her ankle and tie the other end to the mobile above her crib so when she kicked, the mobile would move. Sounds pretty basic, but for her, it was the greatest thrill she had ever experienced. She was learning cause and effect; the reality that her actions made a difference in the world. And it made her so happy.

I’m sure that when I was her age, I had that same joy in being able to effect my surroundings. But somewhere along the line, the reality that my actions have ramifications became a downer. I was happy to accept those pleasant consequences (like being able to control when I peed), but was less eager to embrace the negative ones (like the stitches I needed after attempting to ride my bike without hands). I started to wish I could fade into the background, to live as though my actions did not make a difference. But I couldn’t escape reality.

What I do matters, for my immediate circumstances but also as it effects those I come in contact with. And then the lives that those people come in contact with. And so on, like the ripples that spread throughout a pond when you toss in a rock. And that’s freaky. If what I do matters, then what you do matters. Everybody’s every action ends up effecting everybody else. And that’s a lot of responsibility. What if I mess up? The whole world is screwed! Look at it this way, and it’s no wonder I don’t feel God’s love.

That same person who asked whether I sense God’s love and delight in me reminded me of the delight I have in my daughter. My delight in her isn’t based on her performance. She’s a lousy crawler. She can’t feed herself. She has absolutely no control over when she poops. And her vocabulary? Nearly non-existent! But when she says “Da-da-da-da-da-da!” my love for her overwhelms me. When she army-crawls over to the chair I’m sitting on and pulls herself up to standing, I am so proud, you’d think she’d won a Pulitzer.

God loves us like this.

And I do think the army analogy still holds. God does entrust us with responsibility. We are given charge over our faculties and talents, yes. Our actions effect others. Yes. But since God is God, he can make good come out of our failures. He can hold the world together while we learn how to crawl. We can try and fail. We can work on riding our bikes without hands, even if we need stitches the first time we try it. We should be careful, but not paralyzed. And we should proceed knowing that God loves us as we learn, not just once we’ve mastered it.

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