{"id":250,"date":"2020-10-23T20:18:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-24T00:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=250"},"modified":"2020-12-06T20:20:06","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T01:20:06","slug":"from-a-distance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2020\/10\/23\/from-a-distance\/","title":{"rendered":"From a Distance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In 1985 Julie Gold, an administrative assistant who dabbled in songwriting, came up with lyrics and a melody that she thought sounded promising.

None of the artists or record companies she contacted, however, thought it was worth recording. 

A year later she asked \u201cfolkabilly\u201d singer Nanci Griffith to assess whether her work had potential.  Griffith was so impressed that she included Gold\u2019s song on her next album.  But few paid attention.

Sometimes a hit record simply needs the right artist at the right time.  When Bette Midler recorded From a Distance<\/em> in 1990, it went straight to number one and ultimately garnered the 1991 Grammy for Song of the Year. 

It\u2019s always interesting when a song about God tops the secular charts.  Gold\u2019s lyrics include these lines:

From a distance we all have enough, and no one is in need<\/em>
And there are no guns, no bombs and no disease, no hungry mouths to feed<\/em>
From a distance we are instruments marching in a common band<\/em>
Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace, they are the songs of every man<\/em>
God is watching us, God is watching us<\/em>
God is watching us from a distance<\/em>

It may be reassuring to hear that God has his eye on the world.  But the song naturally raises a vexing question:  At what distance is God watching us? 

If God can\u2019t make out our planet\u2019s hunger, violence, and disunity, does that mean he needs to upgrade his cosmic version of Google Earth?  And who needs an absentee landlord of a God, anyways?

On the other hand, some of us are desperately hoping that the Creator is seriously distant at least part of the time.  We don\u2019t want God to pay too much attention to our behavior.

This summer my three-year-old grandson was playing in our outdoor sandbox.  He knows one of the house rules:  The sand has to stay in the box.  His hope, however, was to pour a generous amount into the grass.  \u201cBah Poo,\u201d he said (and yes, Bah Poo is my grandfather name), \u201cgo over there for a few minutes.\u201d  He pointed off in the distance.  If only I would just go away I wouldn\u2019t discover his nefarious plot. 

There are times when all of us wish God would just go away.  Or at least avert his gaze for a few minutes. 

Isn\u2019t it just like sinners to fantasize about a distant God?     

The 1611 King James Version of Matthew 6:9-13 \u2013 the rendition of the Lord\u2019s Prayer that almost all English-speaking Christians have learned by heart \u2013 begins with these words: \u201cOur Father, which art in<\/strong>heaven<\/strong>\u2026\u201d 

Scholars agree that that translation is misleading. The underlying Greek words are o en tois ouranois<\/u><\/em> \u2013 literally, \u201cwho is in the heavens.\u201d

The KJV text implies, to modern readers, that God is currently located in a celestial realm far away \u2013 perhaps high above the earth or in some kind of parallel dimension.  The Jews of Jesus\u2019 time, however, regularly spoke of three different heavens.  The first heaven is the earth\u2019s atmosphere \u2013 what meteorologists would call the troposphere.  This is the realm where we live, move, and breathe.  The second heaven is the one that contains the sun, moon, stars, and planets \u2013 in other words, the fullness of the visible universe.  The third heaven is the realm of God\u2019s power and presence beyond the cosmos.   

In the Lord\u2019s Prayer, Jesus is affirming that Abba<\/em> \u2013 our Father or Daddy \u2013 is \u201cin the heavens.\u201d  This speaks both to where God is not<\/em> and where God actually is<\/em>. 

God is not hanging out on Mt. Olympus, safely insulated from Earth\u2019s muck and mire.  Nor is he a regional deity, like the gods of the Egyptians, Canaanites, Greeks, and Romans \u2013 confined to a particular piece of real estate.  Nor is God parked just behind the Andromeda Galaxy, watching human beings slog through their lives from a distance. 

Instead, God is in the heavens<\/em>.  Plural.  That means he is everywhere.  He is simultaneously alongside the most distant quasars and closer than our next breath. 

In his book The Divine Conspiracy<\/em>, the late philosopher Dallas Willard suggests that this is the sense of the Lord’s Prayer: \u201cOur Father, who is right here with us\u2026\u201d   
Does God have a \u201clandscape view\u201d of human history?  He does.  God knows the beginning, the middle, and the end of every story.  But he is also experiencing the most intimate details of our lives even as we go forward.  He is not distant from our feelings and our fears. 

Nor is God fazed by those moments when we want to pour sand into the grass. 

He will still be our Father; we will still be his deeply-loved child. 

Which means we can always begin our prayers by saying, \u201cAbba<\/em>, thanks that you\u2019ll be alongside me today, every step of the way.\u201d    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1985 Julie Gold, an administrative assistant who dabbled in songwriting, came up with lyrics and a melody that she thought sounded promising. None of the artists or record companies she contacted, however, thought it was worth recording.  A year later she asked \u201cfolkabilly\u201d singer Nanci Griffith to assess whether her work had potential.  Griffith was so impressed that she… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[82],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-who-is-always-near-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":252,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}