The Night I Met God

This is one of my first childhood memories. 

My mom had tucked me in and I was staring at the ceiling when, suddenly, I was in the presence of God. I felt loved. I felt safe. I felt happy. I felt things too wonderful to describe. I wasn’t lying in bed. I was lying at the end of the rainbow.

The sensation was so intense that I had to tell someone. I got up and shuffled across the hall to my parents’ room. They looked at me bleary-eyed, probably wondering why I wouldn’t go to sleep. I spurted out the first words that popped into my head: 

“I feel like nothing bad could ever happen to me!”

They had no idea what was talking about, of course. 

“That's nice,” they said. “Go back to bed.”

I did. I lay there, letting God wash over me like star shine, slowly fading to black. 

It has been over fifty years but I still remember that night. Why? Of all the hundreds of nights, why does that one stick with me? 

Because it was my first encounter with God, my first taste of wholeness. Like all human wholeness, it came as a gift. I had not been praying or reading the Bible or thinking about God at all. The arms of love appeared from the sky, wrapped themselves around me, and made everything unshakably okay. 

I’ll bet that you have experienced wholeness too.  It may have come when you were out in nature. You may have experienced it in a relationship. Maybe it surprised you in the midst of a crisis. The love of God wrapped itself around you and made everything okay. There was a glorious moment when deep peace that filled you entire being. You felt like nothing bad could ever happen to you.

Wholeness Is Fleeting

Unfortunately, these experiences are the exception, not the rule. Most of the time, everything is not okay—not by a long shot. Your relationships are strained. You are overweight. Cancer threatens. Politics make you crazy. You’re in a car crash. You owe money on your income taxes. The kids are in trouble. Your life seems like a story without a plot. 

You’re the opposite of the boy who burst into his parent’s room exclaiming, “It feels like nothing bad could ever happen to me!” The one thing you feel sure about is that bad things will happen to you.

Failure!

Everyone feels this. The normal way to deal with all this is to bury your head in the sand. This can take many forms. Throw yourself into your work. Start a hobby. Become a Netflix addict. Dissolve yourself into your Facebook feed. Sneak off to look at porn. Eat ice cream. Drink too much. 

You can even use religion to avoid facing this troubled world and your broken life. As a fan of the Simpsons, I call this the Ned Flanders syndrome. The more religious you become, the more you turn into a cartoon character.

There are billion dollar industries that reap their profits from problems caused by these futile attempts to manufacture wholeness. Some bring temporary relief but none provide a solution. Why? Because they treat symptoms, not the disease. It’s impossible to stop the haunting question: “Is this all there is?”

So is it hopeless? Are you condemned to a lifetime of gray despair punctuated by a few exhilarating flashes of full color wholeness? Is the best you can do to stay distracted and try to ignore the gray? Or could there be a way to make wholeness a way of life, to make every moment full color and three dimensional? 

Jesus taught a way of life that makes wholeness the norm. He showed how we can live in God’s presence today, tomorrow, and forever. He called it “the Kingdom of God,” “eternal life,” “salvation.” 

You’re skeptical. If Jesus offers this, why are most people who follow him just as goofed up as everyone else? There is actually a simple reason for this. Somewhere along the way,