I follow an instagram account of children with cancer, Caleb thinks I like to torture myself but I like praying for them, and reading about their stories. A lot of the time they aren’t happy stories, but whether we choose to close our eyes or not these children are out there, dying, and I feel like if I at least read their story and give myself permission to grieve and pray for them, then, in a very very very small way, I am tethered to their pain and I am acknowledging their suffering. At least for a second they aren’t invisible, removed realities I don’t have to live with. I wish I could donate money and time, I wish I could do more, but I can’t right now, so I read their stories, acknowledge them and pray.
I am not sharing that so you all feel proud of me. I am not doing much here really. I am sharing that because a few weeks ago I read about a little 5-year-old girl with a tumor in her brain. She had been disfigured by this tumor and was going to die (actually since I read the original post she has passed away). She was beautiful and I thought about how I have never met a family who has ever had a child with a brain tumor. As I was praying for her I told God, I asked Him to reveal Himself to her in the middle of this situation in a unique way. She is the only five-year-old girl with a tumor like that, the only one I know of, and in the devastation of her situation He has the ability to reveal Himself to her in a way that nobody in the history of the world has ever known Him before.
As I was praying that I heard that small voice in my head say “I’ve done that for her, I do that for all my children.” And I thought about that for a second. I possess knowledge of God that is 100% reserved for me. God is so vast and so big and so incredibly complex that He can give himself a unique part of Himself to each one of us that nobody else in the history of the world gets to possess.
He not only reveals Himself to us uniquely because our circumstances allow for us to see Him through our own eyes in unique ways, but He gives Himself to us in unique ways. So when the Bible says that He dwells in us, He lives in us, it’s not that the same God that is in you is in me, as much as it is that a unique piece of Him that only I can activate and only I can express to the world lives in me. That is why community is so important, because the totality of the knowledge of God is not available to us outside of it. As I learn to see and honor the piece of God that you get to carry, then I learn more about Him.
I know this is no magnificent revelation, but it changes so much. As we understand this then we learn to see the need we have for others, we learn that there is no them, there is just all of us, carrying God, unique pieces of God. Could you imagine what would happen if we all understood that together we make ONE? That we need each other to comprehend and experience Him entirely? That nobody carries more or less God than anybody; we all just carry a unique part of Him?
This is why we can learn from everybody. I understood then why it is that my own wonderful 5 year old can teach me things. Is not so much that she has experienced so much and has read so many books that she can share amazing wisdom with me. It is that her wisdom comes from carrying a part of God that I don’t have, and as I honor her and sit with her to learn from her, then I learn about Him, I learn things nobody else could have taught me, things I couldn’t have read or learned sitting at church. God is a mysterious guy, and His mystery is revealed slowly and beautifully as I walk with Him and I walk with others.
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