Yet because of my varied life experiences, many of my opinions and perceptions are quite different from those of the thirty year old or forty year old I once was. My relationships are different - some have grown because I've worked at them, and some have disappeared.
My relationship with God has changed and grown - because I've worked on it. God could easily have disappeared from my life when I was downcast, depressed, despairing. Instead my relationship with God changed and grew. And through my growing up, and changing, I finally realized that God isn't Santa Claus.
Most children like I was once are taught that if they are good, Santa will reward them on Christmas, and if they are bad, Santa will put coal in their stockings and leave not one present for them. And so we grow up with a very simple - and sometimes simplistic - view of life as a Punishment and Reward System, and many of us confuse God with Santa Claus. We think that if we are good little boys and girls, and later on big boys and girls, God will reward us by giving us good things, and protecting us and our loved ones from all evil. If we are bad, we will be punished and lose all that is dear to us. But - God isn't Santa Claus.
God isn't Santa Claus, and if throughout our lives and our maturing, we stay in touch with God through prayer, stay in touch with God through reading His Words to us in the Bible, stay in touch with God and God's community by attending Church services and sharing a church community's life, our relationship with God has a chance to change and mature and grow. Our knowledge of Who God really IS will change and mature. Otherwise, when tragedies devastate us and shatter our lives as they inevitably will, we can lose our faith in God - because the God we believe in is a child's idea of God, a mistaken idea that God is Santa Claus and that if we're good, we'll never have to suffer, and life will give us only good things. Our other relationships may have grown, but if we haven't paid attention to God, we still comprehend God as a child would.
Real Life, if we pay attention to it, is a combination of laughter and tears, triumphs and tragedies, all happening because of our and others' choices and actions - and all being intersected by random accidents and illnesses. Life is unpredictable. Stressful. Overwhelmingly bad. Overwhelmingly good. And we spend an awful lot of time asking life - and God - "Why? Why did this happen?" We can't help it. We scream "I am a good person! Why are You punishing me instead of rewarding me? Why did you afflict me and mine? You were supposed to protect me and everyone I love from all evil!"
In the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, Job, a good man, continually asks God "Why" as his children die and he loses his possessions and is afflicted with illness. And it's important to ask God "Why?" It's a valid question for any relationship, isn't it? In fact, asking God "Why" is a prayer.
God doesn't reprimand Job for asking, but quietly enlightens Job's mind to understand that God is the Creator God Who loves and sustains every living being upon the earth. All are God's, and God is so far above all creation that God is Mystery. All we can do with the overwhelming Mystery Who loves and sustains us is hope and trust that Mystery leads us when we are suffering and blinded by the darkness of despair. God Who is Abundant Goodness intends good to flow from every evil in our lives. The good may not be easily or immediately apparent. But good will come, it will arrive, as surely as the sun follows the dark. As necessarily as love is necessary for our hearts to bloom again.
"Be still," God says to Job. Be calm and quiet, in other words. Be peaceful. Trust. "Be still and know that I Am God." God is completely and wondrously Other. The Real God is even farther beyond our limited concept of Santa Claus as our planet earth is far from the continually expanding borders of the Universe. The Real God cares for us in ways only God understands.
But this God Who is completely Other and Mystery goes far beyond a Santa Claus who pops down our chimney once a year for a short visit and present delivery. Our God became permanently part of us and at home with us by leaving Heaven behind and living with us on earth in the Person of Jesus. Jesus is true God and true man: the everlasting and most sublime Mystery. We can't understand. We can only stand open-mouthed in awe.
Jesus puts the complete lie to the Santa Claus Reward and Punishment System by becoming the One Who is perfectly good and like us in all things except that he never sins - and yet he suffers, is tortured, and dies. In Jesus, God weeps. In Jesus, God groans "Why?" In Jesus, God is tortured and bleeds. In Jesus, God dies.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus weeps and asks his Father "Why do I have to suffer and die?" He voices the question of every other human being who has ever lived and ever will live. He shows us by his human experience of suffering and his honest, naked prayer, that if we have a relationship with God, we can wrestle with God, question God.
Jesus, completely physically exhausted, weakened by blood loss and suffering, cries out on the cross "My God, why have You abandoned me?" And so, he gives us permission to feel abandoned by God in the darkness of our suffering. Yet his final words before death are "Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit." Suffering, feeling abandoned, dying, Jesus still believes God is his loving Father, hopes in his Father, trusts his Father to have a reason for all that is happening - and to bring absolute goodness out of absolute evil.
Jesus is shattered by life. His relationship with his heavenly Father shatters and is re-formed, transfigured by his suffering and sense of abandonment into a relationship of greater trust, depth, and power. All of his life, he had loved and trusted his Father. But his trust is put to the ultimate test and is changed like gold purified in the furnace. Suffering and death burnish his faith and trust and loving relationship with his Father into blinding glory - the glory that redeems all of humankind.
In the same way, our relationship with God is shattered by our own sufferings. We may even feel as if we've lost our faith. But that's not true. What we've lost is our child's erroneous concept of Who God is. God never promises to shield us from all suffering. What God promises us is what God the Father promised His Son: to bear us up on eagle's wings, to empower us to live and grow through our sufferings, to grow in trust and maturity because we suffer, to trust God more and more completely. And through the various "little deaths" that we endure, to discover, as Jesus did, the power of resurrection. Jesus is raised from the dead: the same Jesus, body, mind, and soul, still bearing his scars which are now glorious signs of his commitment to our new life.
Contrary to a child's belief, only great love AND great suffering are life's real teachers. They empower us to grow, to discover our deepest strengths and power to endure, our deepest capacity for sacrificial love. If we trust God, we can by-pass bitterness because we wait for God's tender mercies, we wait for joy to come in the morning. As we go through our daily "small and large deaths" of disappointment, betrayal, illness, and the deaths of loved ones, we can recognize the daily "small resurrections:" the new ways of living, our transformed ability to love, the beauty of relationships and experiences that we have taken for granted. We grow more confident. More understanding. More able to express our opinions, our thoughts, our feelings. We are capable of deeper, more mature love. We learn that we can laugh even in the midst of our tears.
If we work at our relationship with God, that relationship will grow and change along with our own growth and changes. We will never be afraid to honestly ask God "Why" and to patiently wait for an answer. If we trust when only God can be trusted, we can begin to see the graces and goodness that can flow from even the most tragic experiences. And we hear God say "Why not? I will carry you through this. I will empower you to overcome and to grow more emotionally and spiritually mature. I will enfold you in the Glory of the Every Day, which you have not recognized. Be still. Be calm. Be peaceful. Hope! And know that I am God. I will bring you to eternal life with Me!"
God. Not Santa Claus. Even and eternally much better than Santa Claus.