I believe that God helps us along by being practical.
I heard an old preacher once say that ‘God got the most spiritual when God got the most physical.’ He was referring to the birth of Jesus in a stall with animals and manure and the labor-pained cries of his mother who knew just how physical God was.
I came into a culture that is bifurcated when it comes to relationship with God and being human.
Somewhere along the way, we forgot that God has muddy hands and that Jesus spit.
We are born in our very physical bodies with our particular characteristics.
For me that means, dark brown eyes, fair skin, a small solid trunk, and a pinky toe on each foot that looks just like my mother’s, with the tiniest sliver of a nail. (I mention this because any time I have ever painted my toenails or have had them painted, this is a topic that comes up.)
You see, we brush up against our physical selves every minute of every day.
We eat and have appetites. We get very tired and need sleep. We know what it is to experience physical pleasure, whether that be the hug of a friend or the intimacy of a partner.
Why then, at least for many, does a relationship with God, the divine, the Creator of all things, seem so disembodied?
My mom is practical.
A human whose physical traits God saw fit that I would mirror in my own body.
Growing up I saw my mom make 3 huge meals a day (I come from a family of 10), tend a garden, clean the house, make a wood fire in the stove, help in the barn, throw hay bales, marshall children for bathtime, mealtime, churchtime, bedtime… She did all of this with her small form and the efficiency of a sargent. She also found time to play baseball with her brood in the hay field at the end of the season.
I remember one of the joys of my childhood was watching her win in a foot race with my dad behind the barn where the dirt was soft.
This force of nature who birthed me did not separate out the physical from the holy.
When Mom had had enough of her adolescent daughter getting increasingly annoyed and being increasingly annoying, she would pull me aside and apply this series of questions which served as a homey examen for my young life.
Are you sleeping ok?
When was the last time you had a bowel movement?
Are you spending time with Jesus?
You might think this crude, but isn’t this really where we live?
Whenever these questions were put to me I knew I was receiving the antidote to what was ailing me. I knew that she and God cared about the WHOLE of me.
God is not too precious to talk about how we are doing, really.
Often, our physical condition is reflected in our inner soul health and the same is true in reverse.
A wonderful thing happens that causes joy and (at least for me) I want to celebrate with a meal for everyone with my favorite foods!
In the same way, many times when we suffer physically, it can cause us to tank in our emotional and mental health.
It’s true that life with children is a life of bending down, of kneeling, of crouching, and sometimes just laying out on the floor.
God comes to us children in this way and is present to us in a way that honors the humanness that those God-hands fashioned.
We are, in fact, carrying the traits of our Creator.
The divine ones and possibly even the physical ones.
We are image bearers in every sense of that phrase.