Am I right with God?

Am I right with God? It’s a question I ask about myself fairly often, and the best answer that I can come up with is: I hope that I am. I don’t think there is a way for me, or for any of us, to answer this with complete confidence in this life. We may be able to in the next life, but here and now… the answer isn’t that easy. In this life, there is a lot that we have to take into consideration, a lot that may not be very obvious to us, as we examine our consciences, our actions and our hearts. Certain things only the Lord can see and answer, certain things that only He can know. As we wrestle with this, it’s important to remember who we are and why we are here.

Who we are, above all else that may come to mind, are God’s children.  We were, each of us, created in His image and likeness and, as such, we belong to Him.  We are called to love Him with our whole selves – mind, body and spirit - and to love our neighbors – each of our brothers and sisters – as we do ourselves, no matter what they may look, sound or even act like. It is not up to us to judge; in fact, we are expected to accept and to love one another no matter what. Being human, though, simply accepting and loving isn’t always easy. In fact, being accepting and loving can be especially difficult, given today’s social and political climates; it can be far easier to criticize and ostracize than to accept and to love.

As much as accepting and loving our brothers and sisters should come naturally, it can sometimes be difficult.  Accepting and loving our neighbors – all of our brothers and sisters without exception - as we would ourselves is a commandment and an expectation, but we’re not expected to do it alone. Jesus promised us He would be with us, that he would never leave us, and He provides the help that we need in every area of our lives. He is always here and He is always listening. He is always ready to help us, always ready to change our perspective and always ready to guide us.     

No matter what we hear or see, our acceptance and love needs to be unconditional. Our agreement or disagreement with our brothers’ or sisters’ demeanor, actions or way of life are not a reason to belittle or ostracize. In fact, our disagreement should be considered an invitation to love and care for that person all the more. We are children of God – through Jesus, who walked among us and who promised never to leave us - and we have far more similarities than differences. Because of this, we should be able to see beyond our disagreements, beyond whatever anger or frustration we may feel, and see Jesus standing before us… in everyone we meet.     

Turing to the Lord in situations where joining in with the crowd is far easier than going against them, is critical. Without His help, we aren’t always able to see the person, or group, for who they really are: children of God AND our brothers and/or sisters in Christ. There are some that don’t know to, or don’t think to, ask for the Lord’s help and their I’ve got this attitude can be more of an obstacle than a path forward.

While we’ve been given abilities to accomplish great things in this life, we are never expected to go it alone or rely too heavily on these abilities. We need the help of our Lord and creator to make the best use of the abilities that we’ve been given, as well as His direction to ensure we use our abilities in the way they were intended. He will always help us to see beyond whatever obstacles are in our way or beyond any discouragement we may be feeling. Relying too much on ourselves will inevitably lead us to a wall that we cannot scale or a chasm that we cannot cross; it can also lead to feelings of discouragement or inadequacy because we’ve reached the limit of our capabilities. In those moments, it can be hard to see beyond that wall or that chasm, to see the unlimited possibilities that relying on Christ can provide. No matter how stuck we feel in those moments, though, we need to have the courage to say to Jesus: I can’t do this without you.  

We need to have the courage of Bartimaeus, the blind man whose interaction with Jesus is described in the Gospel of Mark 10:46-52. Being blind, Bartimaeus couldn’t see Jesus, couldn’t look for Him walking up the road.  He had to rely on what he heard and the apparent “buzz” among the people around him to gauge what was going on and to time his call. He paid no attention to those who tried to quiet him or to his inner fear of calling out; he just kept calling out to Jesus.  We need to do the same, no matter what might be holding us back.   

Like Bartimaeus, we don’t see Jesus, but we can feel His presence in our lives if we allow ourselves to. He is all around us, in the world that He created, in the sounds and smells of nature that fill our senses and in the people that we meet. It is Jesus who provides the abilities we have, who provides the strength that we need, who comforts us and who helps us up should we fall. Calling out to Him, like Bartimaeus did, should come naturally, and we should be confident that He hears us when we do, just like Bartimaeus was!        

Jesus is always listening and He is always ready to help us.  This has been made clear to me over and over throughout my life.  Most recently, on a return flight from Germany with my wife and daughter, we experienced an issue mid-flight that neither my wife nor I had a solution for. Our daughter has many sensory challenges and, as you can imagine, being in a small space can be challenging for anyone, but it is especially difficult for her.   We have to take steps in advance to ensure things will go as smoothly as possible for her.   This particular flight was a perfect storm in that the previous day’s flight had been cancelled, causing the airline to have to change the aircraft in order to accommodate the extra people; our daughter no longer had the seat that we had carefully picked out for her so that she would have the most success on this long flight.  We came up with what we thought would be a workable solution, but after 4 hours of people walking by and bumping into her or brushing up against her, it became clear that this was just not working and our daughter’s anxiety and frustration kept growing. She was having a very difficult time, and we still had 4 more hours to go.

All I could do in that moment was ask Jesus for help. I have to admit, I was at a loss as to what that help could possibly look like, so I simply said to Him, only You can help her; only You know what she is feeling and what she needs.   Within minutes, a young woman who had been sitting two rows behind and had noticed how upset our daughter was, got up to see if she was okay and to see if she could help in any way. Once she understood what the issue was, she offered our daughter her window seat, instantly relieving her distress.  The young woman didn’t know it at the time, but she WAS the answer to my prayer.

The Lord is always listening and is always ready to do for us what we ask of Him, within reason, and to lead us to find answers when they are available.  There are times, however, that answers to our questions are not available and He knows that too. We can sometimes be left wondering if He really is listening.  In those times, as we struggle, we need to remember that He is with us, at our side, experiencing our frustration and our sorrows with us.  He knows first-hand what we go through because He experienced the trials that we experience in our lives when He walked among us.  We can take comfort in the fact that He understands how we feel and we can be assured that He will reveal all to us one day.  We just need patience, which is not always easy.

Our answer to the question of being right with God can vary from day to day or even from moment to moment. It can depend on how we feel on a given day, the events in our lives and the events in our ever-changing world. What we can do, though, no matter what’s going on around us or what may be causing us to feel the way we do in a given moment, is follow the example that Jesus set for us and accept His help in overcoming life’s obstacles and set-backs. Though we may not be able to give a resounding “Yes!” to the question of being right with God, we can feel confident that we are close to Him and are loved by Him more than we could ever imagine!

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