Clinging to God

Monday, Nov. 16, 2009 Posted: 4:24:49AM HKT

MANY PEOPLE WEAR THEIR FAITH LIGHTLY. They may wear their religion loudly, but in their inner lives, they touch God lightly. Or their brushes with the divine are fleeting and superficial, accidental and incidental.

Not so the psalmist who declared to God from his inmost being: “My soul clings to you” (Ps. 63:8). This statement is thick with intensity and personal experience. Here there is no light and cursory touching of God. Instead there is an earnest and wholehearted hanging on to God, and it was with soul-felt and soul-led intentionality.

Why do some people have this deep and intense experience of wanting to cling to God? There are at least two reasons we should examine.

Firstly, people cling to God when they are desperately in need of help, when they have run out of rope and hope. When everything is going well, and you seem to be in control of your life, and you think you are managing fine, you tend to neglect or forget that without God you cannot do anything, and that without His mercy, we all are but clay exposed to the sun’s scorching rays – our lives will harden and become brittle and will eventually crack. Comfortable people seldom seek God. Self-sufficient and self-confident people don’t need God – but they live in an illusion.

When trouble strikes, then we realise we need shelter and shade. And when our own self-survival strategies start failing and our lives begin to unravel, we then tend to turn to God more desperately. We cry out to God with loud voices hoping to be heard in heaven. We want God to drop everything and come to our rescue.

The psalmist was no stranger to such moments. He lived in a dangerous world filled with enemies. Sharp weapons and words were directed against him, and circumstances often turned sour for him, and he cried out for God’s intervention. “Hasten, O God, to save me; O Lord, come quickly to help me”, he desperately prayed to God. He urged God, “O Lord, do not delay” (Ps. 70:1, 5). The self-sufficient man whose world starts crumbling discovers that he needs God who is our shelter and shade, our Rock and stronghold.

Many people are like the holiday-maker who lazily floats near the beach, holding a drink in his hand and lightly touching a projecting rock to keep him in position. But then a tsunami strikes, and all hell breaks loose. He forgets the drink and desperately clings to the rock, his grasp of the rock becoming more urgent and resolute.

Could it be possible that God does allow disaster to strike us so that we can learn what it means for our souls to cling to Him? Does He send us nightmares to disrupt our pointless and dangerous daydreams so that our souls can be awakened to reality?

Those who have gone through very difficult circumstances when kith and kin, experts and friends, were not of much help, when they had only God to whom to turn, often come out transformed by their experience. Somehow clinging to God is a life-changing experience. It changes the way we look at God and ourselves, at life and death.

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Bishop Dr Robert Solomon
CP Guest Contributor