We live under a friendly sky

I saw a bumper sticker once that left me uneasy and sort of sad. It awakened me to the skewed view many people have of God and Christianity. It said: “Don’t make me come down there – God”. Sadly, this might be a view of God that even some believers hold subconsciously – that God is like a grumpy, old man, an irritable parent, constantly threatening his children: you better behave or else. My whole life I’ve had a feeling of being in trouble or just one step away from being in trouble. I’m not sure where that came from, since I don’t remember my parents being unreasonably strict. They were loving and kind and did their best, as most parents do. But I was breathing in fear and shame through my surroundings, the society we were living in and the interactions all around me. I just wanted to fit in. I was very eager to follow all the rules and do the right thing, or else. Or else what? I’m not even sure what I thought would happen and I had no interest in finding out. A raised eyebrow or an irritable voice was enough to put me in place.

When I was in my twenties I read a book that rocked my world: The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. it introduced me to the radical grace of our loving God in a new way. Especially one quote from the book stuck with me: We live under a friendly sky. God is not the big police in the sky, ready to squish us for the slightest misstep. No wonder people want nothing to do with Him if they have that view of Him. I don’t know where we as humans got this idea. It must have been from the fall. A seed of deception was planted in humanity. A lie. About God. The Sneaky Snake of Shame snuck in and broke our connection with the creator and twisted the Truth.

My husband and I have been going to marriage therapy the last couple of years and one of the core concepts we have been talking about is connection. We need to be connected with our loved ones. Sometimes lies and hurt come in and we need to circle back around and restore that connection and realize that we are loved and that we still love each other. Now in the days of the internet we understand how crucial connection is. If we lose the internet connection, nothing works. We are so used to being connected that we feel totally lost when this happens. I believe this is what happened to us spiritually, in the fall. The connection was broken with God and now we are lost without him. But as that bumper sticker stated: “Don’t make me come down there”, God did come down here, but not to punish us, but to save us and show us who he really is. We didn’t make Him come down here, because He was fed up with us. He came because of His great love and zeal and passion for us, to seek us out, as a lover seeks his bride, in the appointed time. He shocked a lot of religious people, to the degree that they decided to get rid of Him and have Him executed like the worst kind of criminal. But this was also part of His plan to save mankind.

The whole outlook of mankind might be changed if we could all believe that we live under a friendly sky and that the God of heaven, though exalted in power and majesty, is eager to be friends with us

A.W. Tozer