The First Sighting
I strode into the clubhouse looking around for the Spirit of God. He was everywhere! “Here I am,” he said. The Spirit had no need for audible words or visual displays. He used direct spirit to spirit communication, so I am translating what I perceived in my spirit. The one and only God, the one who keeps us in existence, comes to meet us because the Image of God has opened a way. The Spirit of God came to his people and I had joined the party.
I felt unworthy. Unlike the good-natured Image, there is a not-so-good side to my nature. I was very aware of my failures. I thought I deserved to die from meeting God. However, the Spirit smiled and said in my spirit, “Pleased to meet you Albert.” God had taken the proper precautions himself. The fireproof suit and welding helmet (as excellent as our sponsors’ equipment are) were not needed. As if I could stand before a perfect God and survive. My reasoning faculties must have been in neutral gear.
“I’m pleased to meet you, too,” I said, at a loss for words. I had observed God sure enough, but not with my physical eyes. A wave of revelation washed over me. We cannot see God using our physical eyes. We apprehend nothing in itself with our physical eyes. Light bounces off the outer form of an object. The reflected light waves form a picture on the retina in our eyes. Electrical impulses travel along the nerves to our brains. Seeing things with your eyes is a shadowy experience. But when we meet God, we walk into a solid wall of reality. The first sighting comes with a jolt.
“Let’s be friends,” communicated the Spirit. He didn’t need to ask. My get together with God made me aware of God’s overwhelming love. I had not expected this. God is not an object to view using binoculars, or a concept to grasp by my superior intelligence, but a Person to befriend. The notion of God being out there, remote from us, evaporated. He is never remote. When I tried to see God on my terms, he was invisible. God observation uses different apparatus, the eyes of faith. This is not so strange. Friendships are formed between people through faith. We believe in our friends, trust them, and give of ourselves to one another. We relate to the Image in the same way we relate to other people. This is why the Image entered creation as a human. When we place our faith in the Image, the Spirit rushes into your life like a lover running to meet the loved one. I had not thought that God observation had anything to do with love. I knew the Image, when he was on Earth, taught people to love one another, but I thought this was ethical advice. He was actually expressing his nature. Love involves us in God observation, not because God is in others, but because God is love.
From God’s side of the observation, people are blemished by a streak of nastiness, and a good God could not bear to be with us. God relates to us via his Image because to the Image, we are brothers and sisters, imperfect maybe, but family none the less. God observes his people as friends of the Image. Our imperfections are overcome by the Image’s great love. The Image powerfully mediates between parties that could not otherwise occupy the same space.
The first sighting was a joyous occasion. Max was lying on the floor with a smile on his face. Meeting God had overloaded Max’s circuits and he needed immediate floor rest. Imy was laughing at anything and everything, so much so that tears of joy streamed down her cheeks. As for me, delighted at God’s acceptance I wanted to tell everyone who would listen, but I was incoherent: “I’ve seen God. Me!” The local observers’ club members tried to be helpful, but they were as overcome as the visitors. Kev had seen such euphoria before and joined in our excitement by taking photos with his mobile phone.
After sighting God, our lives are changed. When going birding, you struggle to remember a bird’s markings. God observation does not become a fading memory. The Image once said, “I am with you always.” God remains God to his people, not as a remote sovereign God who punishes the disobedient, but as a constant friend who his people live to please. A new relationship is born. As long as our streak of nastiness continues, we do inappropriate things. Except now we have cause to resist them with help from the Spirit, and we have the hope of a future life without nastiness polluting our characters.
When God observation is done the right way, it is certain of success and comes with the promise of God’s ongoing presence with us. It might not always look that way from Prof. Castle’s metaphorical house, but God’s world view is much larger and preferable. God even answered my question, which I had forgotten to ask. He said, “If I want to keep my friends around after they are gathered to their ancestors, will I not do so? I have experience at raising the dead.”