Favorite quotes this week in study on finding a friendship spirituality!

“The eighteenth C dramatist G E Lessing used to say if he had one question to ask God it would be: “Is this a friendly universe?” Good question. The Father that Jesus revealed, says yes. If we accept a Father God who is loving, we may not understand life any better, but we will not resent life itself any longer.” William Barclay

I’m a firm advocate for a friendship type spirituality! Nice quote to come across! I’m currently working on an article on a creative friendship spirituality. Fun collecting quotes for it! As Barclay puts it, when we see God as friend, it’s easier to come Home to God. And I would add, funner to collaborate with Him creatively. Stewardship becomes a creative act, a collaboration!

Thomas Merton also said, the “deepest demand of the human heart, the religious demand, is the quest for a personal God. A type of God we can be friends with.” If we are to see God not in our image, but us in His, we will start to see Him as the ultimate sacrificial Friend. Van Gogh put it, “Be friends with God through all things.”

Martin Buber’s relational model of the universe, allows for this deep to deep friendship way in both art and living. He assumes it’s possible to actually have I-Thou encounters with God and others! Nice.

My thesis is that God was trying to make friends with Abraham and a people group, and then later through the prophets and most overtly through Jesus, The Friend who lays down His Life for His friends. He was trying to offer friendship with humanity, rather than just a set of esoteric or ethical principles-intimacy and union, were His preferred methods. To be “in Him” as St Paul put it!

That spirituality rest in a relational model. I’m enjoying finding those who were friends of God throughout history. A friendship spirituality also takes the pressure off a bit! It’s easier to approach a friend as we are, rather than a set of principles we can never live up to, or practices we can’t perfect.

Also, I’m looking at what happens existentially or experimentally, when we base our spirituality in a friendship model rather than a practices or laws model. Fun study! Enjoying collecting quotes as well!

St Francis, another friend of God, also has lots of great quotes of becoming a friend of God through nature. Not worshiping nature itself, but meeting God through tending it with God-like tending God’s art. His friendship led to a great stewardship of the earth model, many are still tracing their way back into! A Christian ecology would have to include and flow from friendship! Like we are tending a friend’s land, while hanging out with Our Friend. So let’s be friends, friends!

Good creative stewardship of the earth comes out of overflow from our friendship with God! We start to love what He loves, and in the way that He loves! That’s the organic fruit of a friendship spirituality!