Viewpoint: The true depths of God’s love we have yet to fully discover
04-02-2010Mary Faith “Zoe” Miles
Special contributor
In a previous article, I equated the picture of church worship to a pink-sea anemone, emphasizing the need for each tentacle to participate in worship in order for the sea anemone to dance.Personifying the animal, the sea anemone knows that the ocean moving his tentacles is vast, reaching beyond his home among the fish, seaweed and coral. He goes to lectures about foreign fish and underwater volcanoes, considering himself to be a very open minded and cultured specimen.
Despite his understanding, he doesn’t have the slightest idea that this ocean wipes off the faces of landmasses, carves out continents and hides monsters in its depths. This ocean that runs its waters through the anemone’s tentacles covers more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surfaces and whose depths hide its mysteries from the most equipped scientists.
It’s beyond his conceptualization.
Even still, he lives content in his world where the ocean he knows provides him with nutrients and food, and in return, the anemone praises the ocean with dancing.
Now stretching my artistic personification license just a little further, imagine that the huge ocean, magnificent and powerful, is in love with this random sea anemone.
Its power would give heed to the anemone’s slightest plea even though the sea anemone simply accepts the gifts the ocean already provides.
Not conceiving what an anemone would want from his lover, my analogy begins to break.
To wit this is our knowledge of our Abba. Our knowledge of God is like a sea anemone’s conception of the ocean in which it lives.
We, as dancing anemones, are happy in our churches to sway in the Spirit’s wind. We know that God says that He’s much bigger than we realize, however, we see what He’s given us and are often contented.
Unlike the ant or the sea anemone (not claiming that they don’t have problems which I’m sure they do), we have reason to claim the extra power that our Ocean offers to us.
We don’t have to be content swaying.
Although worship is key to communion with the creator, to not ask for God to give us a greater realization of His water’s depths is to deny Him the opportunity to reveal Himself.
In discussing the qualities that lure Generation Y to church, I’m currently exploring the third and final trait: power.
My generation reads the Bible as it overflows with supernatural power, knowing that He is still “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20). We want a church that is claiming that mighty work, praying hard to see it manifest itself in very tangible ways.
He shows himself in unexpected ways. Watch for Him when you visit your child at lunch, pouring love into her classmates. Talk to the young man at the checkout counter. Hit your knees every morning and pray that God does immeasurably more than you could ask or think.
Then, expect miracles.
Mary Faith “Zoe” Miles is a junior at Oklahoma City University in Oklahoma, a United Methodist institution. She can be reached at mmiles.stu1@my.okcu.edu.
