Meditation... Drawing near

St. Augustine said to this effect, "We are made for God. And our hearts are not quiet until we find rest in Him." Intimacy with God is what I need and crave. It is the craving beneath all other cravings, just like the pleasures at His right hand are those which are pictured for us within all other pleasures. But how do you get close to God? Because to have intimacy, you've got to get close. If that is what you set your heart to do just now, what would you do? Of course God is everywhere. But can you find Him by seeking? Paul indicates that God reveals Himself through all His creation so that, if He would, the unbeliever ought to be inspired to search for Him. But even if he did, his searching would be as one groping in the dark. And he couldn't find God even though He is near to each of us (Acts 17:27). But to His children, God says again and again, "search for Me and you will find Me" (Deut. 4:29; Prov. 8:17; Jer. 29:13; Mat. 7:7). God gives believers the assurance that if they seek, they will find.
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you (James 4:8). But how does one draw near? Where do you "go" to draw near?
There is a faithful emphasis within evangelicalism upon God's intimate and abiding presence with us, no matter where we are. When David sings Psalm 139:8-10, he is not referring merely to God's philosophical presence. Of course God is omnipresent; thus, Paul's comment that He is not very far from any of us. But David is referring to more. He's speaking of an intimate, favoring presence. No matter where you are, God is there loving you. So, it is true that you can "find God" wherever you go - in nature, in relationships, any place. And you should seek God in quiet (and noisy) places, if you want Him. I affirm this teaching and want to press it upon your heart and mine. But there's still more...

Among all the places where we find God, there is only one place where He gives us a material assurance of His presence - the Lord's Supper. Pause for a moment to reflect on the importance of material assurance. First, think of a young child who is going to sleep. A parent will often lie with the child until he falls asleep. Sleep, a place of peace and rest, is made easier for the child when he knows the parent is there. Often, as he falls asleep, the child will awaken briefly one or two times and find renewed assurance of the parents presence before going soundly to sleep. The child craves this assurance. But then, when the child is asleep, the parent departs. The child continues in peace and rests with the thought of the parent's presence, even though the parent is no longer there. What matters for the child's peace is the assurance of your presence. We need that assurance as humans. We need proximity, nearness. It is not good for man to be alone.
And man had proximity to God in the garden, before sin enstranged him from God and from his own wife (and thus clothing became an actualized metaphor for enstrangment), though she was of his very bone. And being cast out from God's presence, no longer able to eat from God's tree-table, man was exiled.
The story of man is his insatiable, and yet unattainable, craving for communion. An illustration of this in contemporary America - Everyone wants to get married. No one can stay married. We pine for the right one. We joke about the ball and chain. Major businesses are fueled both by our desire for communion and our inability to maintain it. The garden spits us out. Yet we long to return.
The story of God is His yearning to dwell with a holy people, and the consequent necessities He endured to obtain this end. And the illustration of this is the bread and the wine. Even upon His first distribution, Jesus confesses His deep longing, "With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer..." (Luke 22:15). And He still yearns for intimacy with us. So says James, "The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously" (Jas. 4:6).
So, how do we make it back to the garden? How do we draw near to God? How does God satisfy His yearning? How does He draw near to us? Without denying God's continual and ubiquitous intimacy, I continue to be amazed at what God has done (does!) for us in the Lord's Supper. There, we have the material assurance that a child's faith craves. And thus we have the peace of knowing His presence with us. There, God lets us eat of the tree-table. And nothing is more intimate that partaking of God. There is no nearness nearer than ingestion. It is an actualized metaphor.
Have you ever been stricken with the longing for the experience of John (John 13:23)? To be able to rest your head upon the bosom of Jesus? What is this desire? It is a desire to be close to the Him. But more, we long for the assurance of His proximity. Just to be near and to have the sensibility of that nearness. Well, we have that nearness and we have God's promise of that nearness (Draw near to me and I will draw near to you), but He gives us more. Like a parent gives to His the child who craves both rest and nearness, He gives us what He gave John - the sensible assurance of His presence. We need to hold the bread and eat like a child needs to see and feel his parent's presence. What matters is the presence. What assures us is the touch. And yet it is indeed a real partaking. When we taste, we really do see (Psa. 34:8). We are therein assured of the intimacy for which we crave.
Though the Scriptures plainly teach that God personally reveals Himself through all that He has made (Rom. 1:19, 20), so that those who see through new eyes might find God throughout the whole creation, there is a "coming to the garden" sort of drawing near. And that is precisely what our holy God has arranged for a holy people. His worshipers "draw near" when they come to His house for corporate, public worship (Psa. 73:28, where the answer to the psalmist's dilemma is found in the sanctuary [v17]; Eccl. 5:1; Isa. 29:13, where God rebukes His people for drawing near with lips only; Isa. 45:20; Heb. 10:22, whose whole emphasis is upon the New Covenant assembly). This is a healthy supplement for us evangelicals who think of drawing near to God as a strictly private affair. It is a rebut to those who say "I don't find God in church." Quite the contrary, we who long for the intimacy that John experienced at the supper can have that in a way that can't be had outside of the called assembly. For in the garden, there is the tree. And at the tree-table, there is Jesus fervently desiring. Taste and see His yearning... and be satisfied with His peace (John 20:26).