Longing for God
/By Elizabeth Stalcup, founder and executive director of Healing Center International
Last month I wrote about eradicating self-hatred, that pernicious problem that besets most everyone at some level, making it difficult for us to embrace our true identity. In that post I talked about the idea that only God knows who we truly are, because he is the one who made us and he alone knows who he made us to be.
This month, I want to talk about the idea that we are made in the image of God, or imago dei in Latin. Before I went to seminary, I did not understand why this was so important, but now I do. Get ready for some theology! Theology is not dry or boring, it is fascinating!
If we are going to live the joyful life that God intended for us, we must be deeply grounded in the knowledge that we are made in the image of God, not just with our rational mind but with our experiential heart. In Genesis 1:16, the Trinity said to each other, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” We start with the question, if we are made in God’s image and likeness, what is God like?
First, the Trinity is complete. Each person of the Trinity has a different role and a distinct function, yet they function as a whole.
Second, the Trinity loves each other, respects each other, and honors each other. There is no conflict, no jealousy, no competition. My professor says, “The Eternal Trinitarian Formation Event is the giving and receiving of love.” Creation was birthed out of an overflow of their love for each other.
Let’s think about what it was like for Adam and Eve to be created in the image and likeness of the Trinity. Humanity was the apex of all the created order.
John Wesley says this about Adam and Eve: they had God’s wisdom and saw everything as God does. Their will was perfect. They were able to will and do the Lord’s will for them. They enjoyed perfect freedom to operate within their dominion and talked with God about everything. They lived in joy. They were securely bonded to the Trinity and lived in the expectation that the Trinity would meet their needs. Lastly, they experienced the fullness of marital love.
Take a moment and reflect on this. What would your life be like if you could see everything, including yourself, as God does? If you had a perfect will so that what you wanted to do was just right with no deception or confusion? What if you experienced perfect liberty in your domain, the area that God has given to you? What if you could see and hear God clearly all the time and never lacked relational connection, comfort, wisdom, or guidance? What if you lived in joy and were completely secure that God is for you, not against you? What if your marriage, and friendships were characterized by sheer joy, where you knew that you were made for each other? Where your skills and strengths complemented your spouse’s and the two of you lived in perfect harmony?
The incredibly sad news is that Adam and Eve sinned, and we lost access to Paradise. The incredibly good news is that what was lost will one day be restored. Let’s take a minute and feel the sorrow of what was lost.
In the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa wrote a moving essay on our longing for God. In this essay he looks back to the garden from our fallen state. I was so moved by this essay that I wanted to share it in its entirety (in this text, Gregory uses the phrase “the Good” for God).
Gregory of Nyssa on the Longing for God
The more that we believe that “the Good” (God), on account of its nature, lies far beyond the limits of our knowledge, the more we experience a sense of sorrow that we have to be separated from this “Good,” which is both great and desirable, and yet cannot be embraced fully by our minds. Yet we mortals once had a share in this “Good” which so eludes our attempts to comprehend it. This “Good”—which surpasses all human thought, and which we once possessed—is such that human nature also seemed to be “good” in some related form, in that it was fashioned as the most exact likeness and in the image of its prototype. For humanity then possessed all those qualities about which we now speculate—immortality, happiness, independence and self-determination, a life without drudgery or sorrow, being caught up in divine matters, a vision of “the Good” through an unclouded and undistracted mind. This is what the creation story hints at briefly (Genesis 1:27), when it tells us that humanity was formed in the image of God, and lived in Paradise, enjoying what grew there (and this fruit of those trees was life, knowledge, and so on). What was high has been made low; what was created in the image of heaven has been reduced to earth; the one who was ordained to govern the earth has been reduced to a slave; what was created for immortality has been destroyed by death; the one who lived in the joys of Paradise has ended up in this place of drudgery and illness . . . Our tears would flow even more if we were to list all those physical sufferings that are an inevitable part of our human conditions (by this, I mean all the different sorts of illnesses) and when we reflect on the fact that humanity was originally free from all of these, and when we compare the joys that we once knew with our present misery by setting our sadness alongside that better life. So when our Lord says: “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matthew 5:5), I believe his hidden teaching to be this: The soul should fix its gaze on “the true Good,” and not be immersed in the illusion of this present life.[1] (Alistair McGrath, p. 141)
I want to invite you today to enter into Gregory’s longing for God. Find a quiet place and let yourself know that what you seek is a longing for God and the life he intended for you. Imagine that life. What aspects of it appeal most to you? Let it become real to you.
Talk to God about your sadness and brokenness, both yours and that of those around you. Let yourself feel your sadness. Then offer your sadness to God.
Let us pray:
Most merciful God, you made me for yourself, to give and receive love. I keep seeking for what will satisfy me, but now I see that I am longing for you. I am so aware of my fallen state and so saddened by it. I know that you are the source of all life and love. I live in such confusing times when so many claim the moral high ground. I am bewildered and lost. This sadness is too much for me. I ask you, gracious Trinity to lift this sadness off of me. I release it to you. Come Holy Spirit and fill me to overflowing so I might love as you love and see as you see. Let me draw ever closer to you, so that I might begin to experience your goodness at deeper and deeper levels. Open my mind and heart to understand and receive all you have for me now. Help me to know that I am made in your image and likeness. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Although we will not fully recover what was lost until we see Jesus face to face, we can draw near to him daily and begin to recover what was lost as we press into him. He is truly what we are longing for. As Augustine wrote, ““Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”
I am praying for you, dear one.
[1] Alister E. McGrath, Christian Spirituality: An Introduction, 2003, Blackwell Publishing, Ltd. Oxford, UK.
Much of what was presented here was inspired by Steve Martyn’s brilliant lectures in the Theology of Spiritual Formation at Asbury Seminary, Fall, 2020.