Familiar ground

Yesterday the Eucharistic Gospel was about friendship - I have been thinking about this. More about a comment which was made during the homily about someone who had been friends with God for a very long time than the actual Gospel I have to admit.

I have been friends with God for a long time. I have found God in all sorts of places I didn't expect God to turn up, especially when I was thinking that I was taking a break from God - and the strange thing is when God showed up in those places I was always pleased to see God.

I know God pretty well and yet realize that if I were to spend every second left to me on this earth getting to know God better I would not know God very well at all. This is the paradox of friendship - we can know the other intimately and yet with layers and cracks and things which are hidden even from ourselves there are always new avenues to open up - well with other people.

God already knows us and this has the real advantage that when we are having those times when we think God might not really like us all that much and then stumble across God anyway there is no danger that God will somehow be surprised by us - we may be surprised by God but why not enjoy a God who surprises us, who enjoys us, who loves us enough to be familiar with us.

When we have been friends with God for a long time we can forget that it is hard to begin with - hard to understand that God really is that kind and generous - that we can always come back. We who know that need to be mindful of those who may not - who may have heard it but do not know it.

Just like human relationships our friendship with God changes over the years, our way of being and communicating, our understanding of what is. Our need for repentance and returning remains the same as the first day we said Jesus was Lord and so (annoyingly) does our capacity for sin. But I think that when we have been at this for a while the familiar ground of friendship gives us something which only time can give - a confidence and familiarity in our faith and in a God who waits endlessly to greet us.