GOD IS OTHER (,) PEOPLE

If you are like me, there are times in your life when you feel close to God and there are other times when God seems so very far away. There are times when we want to feel that closeness and cannot and there are other times when we actually feel that closeness but would like God to move away. The bottom line is that we can never, ever get a handle on God because, people, God is Other.

God is not like us even though we have been created in the image and likeness of God. Our goal in life is to become as like God as we can, given our humanity and God’s divinity. We’ll never get close. Even the greatest of saints came up short, very short. They were saints because they gave it their best, something that I cannot say, unfortunately, about myself.

God is simply other, other than you and me. We cannot reach out and touch God as we can reach out and touch others, especially those we love. Yet there are times when we want to, when we really need to, given what is going on in our lives. We want to reach out and grab hold and not let go so that God will see us through whatever it is that is going on in our lives that needs the assurance that God will help see us through. And it is sometimes those times when we need God the most that God seems so far away, so other, if you will.

Again, it is in those times when it seems as if someone is saying to us, “Don’t you get it? God is Other, people.” We do get it. But, at the same time and in the same sentence, as it were, what we often do not get is that same person reminding us that “God is other people.” God works in others. God is there for us in other people. When other people surround us with their love and care and concern, they are enveloping is with the arms of God, whether we realize it or not.

That is the paradox of our faith. God is both other and other people. We cannot grab hold of God as God but God grabs hold of us in and through other people. That is the way God works for the most part. The sad part in all this is twofold. First, it is usually only after the fact and after thought and reflection that we realize that God was right there through thick and thin in others, in those who stood by us.

Second: we either miss the point or even deny it that we are the other that is God to those who need God’s immediate presence in their lives. We forget that as children of God, as God’s flesh and blood, God is present in us when we are present to others. That truth can be very overwhelming because it means that a tremendous responsibility has been placed on our shoulders, one that we must not shirk or deny.

God is indeed other given who God is, but God is also other people, you and me, when, by our very lives, we make God present to others just as others make God present to us.