Question

How do we experience God?

David Arnow Jewish

We can experience God in our deepest relationships because we are all created in God’s image. After reconciling with his long estranged brother, Jacob tells Esau that “to see your face is like seeing the face of God” (Genesis 33:10). I’ve also felt glimmers of God in moments of prayer, studying sacred texts, standing before nature, striving for social justice, in the midst of writing, and in great music. The encounter is fleeting — and startling. God sneaks up on us, as it were. The key is being open. “Where is God?” a Hassidic Rebbe asked. “Wherever you let God in.”

Related Texts

It is impossible to tell men what way they should serve God. For one way to serve God is through the teachings, another through prayer, another through fasting, and still another through eating. Everyone should carefully observe what way his heart draws him to, and then choose this way with all his strength.”
— Hassidic Teaching*

Faith is preceded by awe, by acts of amazement at things that we apprehend but cannot comprehend.
— Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)*

Were I to remain totally true to my theological convictions, I would fall silent in the face of God’s overwhelming and inherently mysterious nature. But then I would be completely bereft. So I talk of God and think of God, knowing all the while that nothing my mind or my language can possibly come up with even begins to approach an adequate comprehension of God’s essence.
— Neil Gillman (1933—)*

We come to know God through relationships with one another, opening ourselves to the divine presence as manifest in those whom we allow ourselves to love.
— Arthur Green (1941—)*

Mary C. Boys Christian

We experience the “infinitely incomprehensible holy mystery of God” in myriad ways: in loving relationships, in mindfulness and gratitude, in beholding beauty, in prayer and silence, in the quotidian demands of our lives, in ritual and liturgy, in moments of amazement, in communion with all living creatures, in study and contemplation, in acts of justice and peace, and in forgiving and being forgiven. The Divine Presence permeates our world, if only we have ears to hear and eyes to see. There exists, says Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara, a “whole spirituality focused on the elemental things of life, in friendships, in the little joys of everyday”; these manifest the “dailiness of salvation.”*

Related Texts

Holy mystery cannot be situated within our system of coordinates but escapes all categories. Hence, to think rightly of God we must give up the drive to intellectual mastery and open up to the Whither of our spirit’s hungry orientation. [Quoting Karl Rahner:] “The concept ‘God’ is not a grasp of God by which a person masters the mystery; but it is the means by which one lets oneself be grasped by the mystery which is present yet ever distant.”
— Elizabeth Johnson, The Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God (New York: Continuum, 2007), 35-36

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”
— John 15:1-5

“Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
— Letter of Paul to the Romans 9:26-27

Muhammad Shafiq Muslim

The relationship between God and people is an intimate one. People are the vicegerent of God (2: 30) and represent His image on earth. The Qur’anic concept that God is closer to a human being than his/her jugular vein means to search God within oneself, not outside. The Qur’an refers to a primordial covenant of mutual relationship between God and humanity at the very creation of human being (7:172). Every person is imbued with moral failings as well as with consciousness of God from the start of his/her life (91:7, 8). The human heart is the center of attention in Islam. If the heart is clean and pure and filled with good deeds, a Muslim is conscious of the presence of God and experiences His presence within him/herself. A darker heart filled with bad deeds prevents a believer from such experience. The five pillars in Islam prepare a Muslim to cleanse his/her heart to experience God’s presence.

Note: Translation of the Qur’anic verses and many of the Hadith translation with references were taken from Islamicity.com; some translations of and references to the Hadith were taken from ahadith.co.uk.

Related Texts

Holy mystery cannot be situated within our system of coordinates but escapes all categories. Hence, to think rightly of God we must give up the drive to intellectual mastery and open up to the Whither of our spirit’s hungry orientation. [Quoting Karl Rahner:] “The concept ‘God’ is not a grasp of God by which a person masters the mystery; but it is the means by which one lets oneself be grasped by the mystery which is present yet ever distant.”
— Elizabeth Johnson, The Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God (New York: Continuum, 2007), 35-36

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”
— John 15:1-5

“Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
— Letter of Paul to the Romans 9:26-27

Footnote