Archives for October 2017

Where Do You Feel God?

I’ve spent the last 18 months working with a local non-profit called Faith & Culture Center. I have led this organization as its executive director since January, 2017, working primarily on bringing together diverse groups of Muslims and non-Muslims (many of whom are Christians) for dialogue and relationship-building.

Why do I do this work? This exhausting, energy-expending, frustrating-as-all-get-out work?

I do this work because I feel God in it.

Let me explain.

This work is hard. It is an uphill battle every day as we attempt to humanize the “other,” all the while having to continuously check ourselves and our own assumptions. While there is incredible and profound meaning in this work, there is no glory in it.

And it’s perhaps for this reason that I feel God’s presence in it so strongly — because I’ve had to come to God repeatedly in prayer to ask for help and guidance, and to understand my role and purpose in it all.

Through this work, God has supported me. God has given me a church home, and relationships with my pastors, that have fortified me and reassured me that I am to keep moving forward. At least for now.

Through this work, God has blessed me. God has transformed me through the relationships that I’ve developed with others who do not share my faith. These relationships have allowed me to truly live out what it means to be a follower of Jesus and to love Him by loving others. Every day, I get to experience the beauty of these incredible souls that God has brought into my life as they love and stretch me.

These relationships are not perfect. We falter, make mistakes, and misunderstand each other. But God’s presence pushes us forward towards understanding and reconciliation.

The process is hard and it’s painful. Especially as I’ve had to look inward and call out my own prejudices and shortcomings. But it has transformed me into a stronger Christian, and one, who, though she fails repeatedly, has become certain of God’s presence in her life.

Where do you feel God?

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