Seminarian Reflection June 30: Becoming friends with God

      This past week, I had the opportunity to help out with Vacation Bible School (VBS) at the parish. This involved ministering to K-5 graders by leading them through Bible Stories, teaching them about the faith, and fostering their budding relationships with God. The theme this year was “friendship with God,” and each day had a different emphasis (God is a friend who is real; a friend who loves; a friend you can trust; a friend forever; and a friend for everyone). 

      While most adults I know (including myself at times) struggle with the idea of friendship with God, to the children it seemed as natural as being friends with their classmates. Perhaps this is because children have an easier time making friends in general. The open and loving hearts of children facilitate friendships much easier than the guarded hearts of adults. Children have not yet been hurt by the world and others enough to learn to guard their hearts. This is both a terrifying and beautiful reality.

   On Father’s Day, I wrote on the relationship between friendship and discipleship with the Lord, 

noting how in John 15:7-17 the Lord shows us that we must first be His disciples in order to become His friends. Much of our struggle in becoming friends with the Lord goes right back to this key issue: We are not truly His disciples. In searching both my own heart and my interactions with those I have shared the Gospel with, I have come to believe that the root of this struggle is that we don’t trust that the Lord is someone who we can trust and is someone who loves us. How can we overcome this obstacle?

     Our Lord gives us the answer: “unless you… become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). It is always edifying to work with kids, because of their simple but deep faith in the Lord. When explaining the image of the Sacred Heart, I told the kids at VBS that Jesus loves us so much that His heart is on fire. Not a single one of them doubted this; I might as well have told them that the sky is blue. When I told the kids that God has a special mission just for them—a vocation of some kind—they were immediately on board. They were ready to follow Christ wherever He led them, because they knew that He was someone who loved them and that they could trust.

      The moments I have struggled the most in my spiritual life have almost always been the result of me making things more complicated than they need to be. “Keep it simple, Colby!” my spiritual director often says to me. Children have a natural trust, and that trust includes trust in God. Too many of us allow that trust to die in our hearts, forgetting that God is a friend who is trustworthy and who loves us. Let us all pray for an increased trust. Let us pray for deeper friendship with God. Let us pray to become like children, “for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14).