Being With

Speaking of 'being with' others, as I did in my previous post, this is exactly what God has always done - been with us. God, who is love, and can only claim to be love through being the relational Trinitarian God of Father (Parent), Son (Saviour) and Holy Spirit, has always been committed to travelling with human beings in their journey through life (and death), including, and possibly especially so, through any experience of suffering. If you doubt this, please give the possibility of opening up to God a thought. This is often quite hard to contemplate on your own, so this is an invitation to find a trusted other (who already knows God personally) to guide you into this. As the old Christian traditional belief rightly holds, God loved his human creations (and the whole world) so much, that God ushered his own Son, the epitome of God's own character, into the human environment, to seek to bring about transformation in both individual and communal life (refer John 3:16-17). Jesus himself, in his earthly life, reached out to all, especially to those who had been oppressed and excluded. This is certainly taking a desire to 'be with' seriously. God continues this very day to be on the Divine mission of connecting with people and inviting a relationship.