What does God want? I’m trying to meditate on this question, specifically, instead of one of my more common ones:
What does God want me to do?
What does God want me to do, in order for Him to do what I want Him to do?
Why are my circumstances not going the way I want them to?
As you can see, my questions are generally self-interested. However, as I finished typing that previous sentence, I began to wonder if it’s possible to reflect on what God wants apart from my context, my own existence. What can I really know or understand about a limitless God that isn’t expressly communicated in whatever metaphoric expressions that my limited mind can comprehend? Could we understand anything of God unless He intently translated it into frameworks, languages, and interactions that are within the bounds of human experience?
“And Jehovah said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham that which I am doing? And Abraham shall become a great and powerful nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. For I have known him, so that whatever he may command his sons and his house after him, even they may keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice; to the intent that Jehovah may bring on Abraham that which He has spoken of him.’”
—Genesis 18:17-19 (a literal translation; emphasis added)
God chose and called Abraham, entering into relationship with him and leading him through a life filled with twists, turns, ups, downs, and strange milestones. In Genesis 18, God stops in to see Abraham on his way to Sodom to see how the people have chosen to live. What does it seem like? It seems like He’s having a revelatory conversation, in Himself, as a learning moment for Abraham (and for me as the reader).
What does God want?
If the way of God is “to do righteousness and justice”, what does that mean, in itself, but also what does that mean for me? Most days my righteousness is probably just focused on my rightness, fighting to make sure I’m not wrong. Justice is mostly my justice, serving as a framework and worldview to ensure my rights are preserved and I’m suffering no wrongs.
Perhaps what God is about is less about being right and more about being in right relationship—being right with one another. Doing justice means doing what is good and well for all of us together, even if at this moment it doesn’t seem like that’s right or fair for me or you. Ever since the garden, aren’t we basically still doing what is good in our own eyes?
And, I don’t know how to do this—to really live this, to really walk it out in the daily rhythms of life. And yet, because of Jesus, I can. My relationship has been made right through Jesus’ right relationship. When I fall short, I’m looked on with compassion by a loving Father. Each moment in my day is filled with the gentle leading of Holy Spirit. My only hope is that as God holds on to me, I continue to hold on to Him and walk with Him and abide in Him, so that I grow more and more in doing righteous and justice.
