Conditions...

"Be who you is, or you will be who you ain't," was the exact wording used by the diminutive man on stage.

I had arrived at the theater early Friday evening to rehearse with my friend and fellow musician, Kevin. He had been asked to lead a few songs before each session of a talk by Brennan Manning and wondered if I would help out. I readily agreed weeks ago,but now here we were and, well, I just wasn't sure I wanted to be there at all. I won't bore you with the details, but there is always something better to do than attend a lecture. Lecture, even the word bores me, but since I had made the commitment to my friend, I decided to make it work, come what may.

After Kevin and I finished leading the worship time, a white-haired, man shuffled onto the stage and began with a joke of Yiddish origin. It was hilarious. But the humor stopped there, at least the intentional humor as this unassuming man, known throughout the Christian world for his books on the grace of an ever-loving savior, wove a real life tale of his own destructive habits and the God who loved him through it all. It was his personal openess that convinced me that this was going to be far more than a lecture, that an encounter with something extraordinary was about to take place.

"As a man I love people, places and things that attract my eye, please my senses. But God loves no one because they are pleasing to him, rather he loves because it comes from inside of him. It is not dependent on how we act, what we say, or how much money we give to the poor." Simple enough, but...

Even if we don't believe in God EVERYTHING else is dependent on our performance, hence it is conditional. Our marriages, our parenting, business, jobs, all of it point to the normal way of looking at things. That's it, "normal" is what we expect, but Manning said it last night, or should I say he shouted it, "YOUR VIEW OF GOD IS REFLECTED IN THE WAY YOU ACT IN THIS WORLD! But God does not act the way we expect him to. He loves us when we are lovable, when we are unlovable, he loves us when we are light, when we are darkness!" ARGH! I can't even begin to say what he, Manning, said. I can't even hardly understand the God he described, because what he said was so Earth shattering, so unlike ANY Christian I have met, so far removed from ANY so-called saint filled with virtue, that I found it incredulous. Yet, as I sat there listening a voice, no, a memory, memories began to parade themselves across my mind as if to say, "yes, all this man says about me is correct, but you have such a hard time seeing it."

In the end the words have failed me. But words, like lectures change no one. What will change me, though, is the lingering sense that I encountered the one, true God, as described in Christian scripture, but seldom encountered in Christian culture.

"For God so loved the World," the good book says, but the world couldn't hear the message born 2000 years ago.

I still don't understand all of what I have heard, but in my ignorance I am now listening more closely to hear his voice of love.

Confused? Me, too. Maybe he (God) is just too big to comprehend.