{"id":9311,"date":"2019-06-28T09:45:05","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T14:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=9311"},"modified":"2019-06-20T09:47:55","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T14:47:55","slug":"a-relational-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=9311","title":{"rendered":"A relational God"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nFrom Reynolds, Rebecca K. <\/span>Courage, Dear Heart: Letters to a Weary World<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A couple of months ago, a non-believing friend told me that he loves Greek mythology more than Old Testament stories because Greek gods and goddesses have human personality traits that make them relatable. Zeus is stormy. Hera is manipulative and difficult. Athena plays favorites. \u201cHoliness is too strange,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t understand it. I don\u2019t want to be close to a shapeless fire on a mountain.\u201d In this moment, I realized the relational importance of the incarnated Christ because in Jesus, we see a compression of divine emotional complexity. In him, we find a fiery Lord who turns over tables in a temple, a tender Lord who weeps with the weeping, a gentle Lord who welcomes little children, a weary Lord who sleeps, and an introverted Lord who needs time alone. We also find a Lord who sometimes wants to quit and go home. \u201cLet this cup pass from me,\u201d[5] he prayed\u2014wishing for a way out that would not come. Here, Jesus gives us a beautiful example of authentic prayer\u2014showing us that we don\u2019t have to go skipping and grinning into every loss we face. We can cry out. We can weep. We can be honest with the Father about all of our feelings before we come at last to \u201cNot my will, but thine.\u201d[6] It\u2019s okay for that process to be a monumental battle for us because it was a monumental battle for Jesus. You have a High Priest who is able to empathize. You can talk to him straight.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Reynolds, Rebecca K. Courage, Dear Heart: Letters to a Weary World A couple of months ago, a non-believing friend told me that he loves Greek mythology more than Old Testament stories because Greek gods and goddesses have human personality … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p34kFn-2qb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9312,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9311\/revisions\/9312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}