Spiritual lessons

I strongly believe that God is a God of metaphor.

God created us as spiritual beings, as part of a spiritual realm, and with an eternal spiritual inheritance. But He also created us to be physical, with physical bodies, senses that perceive the physical world, and as part of a physical universe. I believe that part of the result of sin is that we are vastly more aware of our physical surroundings than we are of our spiritual surroundings. I believe that God, in His infinite wisdom and sovereignty, designed a myriad of metaphors into our physical world in order to illustrate the intangible to us. To bring us back to the spiritual. The Bible points out many of these:

~Marriage is like the relationship between Christ and the Church
~Physical illness and healing mirror our spiritual illness and the healing only God can provide
~Agriculture illustrates the work of God in our lives
~The Old Testament tabernacle symbolized innumerable facets of our New Testament relationship to God
~The interdependence, uniqueness and harmony of the human body shows us a picture of the Body of Christ
~Circumcision…
~Baptism…
~Communion…
The list goes on and on

Sometimes God even uses various people’s lives as a metaphor:

~King David’s reign and many of his experiences were a foreshadowing of Christ.
~Jonah’s 3 days in the fish was like Christ’s 3 days in the grave.
~Hosea was called to live out a literal picture of the lengths that God would go to redeem His wayward Wife.
~Joshua leading the Israelites into the Promised Land pictured Jesus leading us into our Promised Land. Joshua and Jesus even mean the same thing in Hebrew.
~Speaking of names, biblical individuals' names were even symbolic of who they would become.

Over and over and over again, Scripture shows us how God has built His spiritual truth into our physical world in tangible metaphors.

Some of these, I believe, we’re left to discover on our own as we go through life. I’m beginning to discover another important one through my children (they’ve shown me many over the years!) I have to be honest, one of the things I like least about being a mom is that it’s so constant. The kids say “Mom” before they even think about it! They call me when they need something; they call me when they want something; they call me if someone makes them mad; they turn to me when they’re hurt or scared or thirsty or tired. They follow me around talking to me about everything and nothing at all, just to stay in my presence. They don’t care if I’m busy, tired, or deathly ill, they come after me. It tends to drive me out of my mind!

Now, I know that patience is a challenge for every mom, but a while ago I was unsettled in my spirit about how much the “constant” thing bothers me. It seemed to be a red flag to me that my heart is spiritually backwards. Children have been “constant” since the beginning of time, and Jesus was not irritated by them. In fact, He commands us to become like little children ourselves in a spiritual sense. When I search the Scripture, I believe that the one thing God wants from us more than anything else is to abide in Him. This “thing” that my children do…I wonder if it is God’s metaphor for what it looks like to abide?

I don’t think I ever fully leave my children’s minds. I am their answer to everything; their first response. They’re uncomfortable when they get too far away from me, they enjoy being in my presence so much that sometimes they’re harder than a booger to shake! They want to be in conversation with me so much that they even tell me completely meaningless stuff like, “I’m wearing yellow socks today.” They abide with me.

When I realize how far I am away from this ideal spiritually, it makes me ashamed. And when I realize how precious a child’s constant pursuit is to Jesus, and how annoying it is to me, it makes me even more ashamed. I tend to recoil at what God loves most.

Lord, change my heart until I live and breathe You.