Enjoying God

The other day, a priest said something I thought was profound: Jesus lived more than 30 years of a happy life with people he loved; he was only on the cross for three hours.

It was a good reminder that when times are good, it is a gift, and we can enjoy it.

I think so much focus can be placed on suffering within Christianity first of all because it is something we all experience and are trying to make sense of. Another reason, perhaps, is because, as the main event of our salvation and a beautiful manifestation of the lengths our God will go to love us, Christ's Passion is recorded at length in each of the Gospels. We don't get to read a lot about Jesus' day-to-day life, however; we mostly have to imagine the mundanity, the small frustrations, the moments that incited his laughter. We don't get to know a lot about the people who were part of his community whom he engaged with regularly, the places he liked to go to be with people or to be alone, the conversations he had that brought him joy and renewal. Because we don't get to read a lot about it, perhaps, it can be easy to forget that our Lord, I imagine, enjoyed life.

This is not, of course, to diminish our Lord's suffering, or to diminish our own or others' suffering when we suffer. Life, because we're not yet to Heaven but are in the world that undergoes the consequences of sin, will give us ways to suffer, and when that comes, we can hold fast to Jesus who understands. This is to say, however, that when joy and happiness come, we can also let ourselves rejoice without fear or guilt. Our God is a good Father who delights in giving his children good gifts.

I think it's a good reminder, too, that more than anything, our God just wants to be with us. So often, I think it can be easy to bring an agenda to God -- a list of our requests, questions and needs that he delights in hearing. How often, though, do we hand those over to God and then allow ourselves to simply be with God, letting God be with us, delighting in each other's presence? How often do we invite God to do fun things with us, as we do with someone we love? How often do we abandon ourselves to childlike delight and laughter and faith in our God's presence with no other goal than being with God?

Maybe it comes down to trust, knowing our God sees our needs and is taking care of them, believing because of that, we can live freely, letting God iron out the details of how our lives will go as we take each step, faithful to the dailiness of our lives.

It's through this that we can be like Jesus, who enjoyed life with others and life in communion with his Father, which was also life in communion with himself.

Our relationship with God doesn't have to be one of drudgery; let us simply enjoy being with God, and let that lead us to enjoying being with others.