My Jesus in a Bottle

I've been thinking a lot about my faith lately, in a pre-child reflective kind of way. Mostly, I've been thinking about how to have a faith worth passing down to my kids.

We were church people when I was growing up. But the more I've thought about it, the less I can remember seeing my parents practice their faith in our home. We were all "Christians," with many Bibles on our shelves, but mostly we were Church Christians. We practiced our faith two or three days a week in a special building, but it didn't necessarily come home with us.

I have no memories of my dad studying his Bible, and it wasn't until post-divorce that my mom's pile of morning devotionals showed up on the kitchen table. We read the Easter story and the Christmas story, we prayed before meals and at bedtime. Safety prayers -- Jesus, let not this food poison us, let not our dreams frighten us.

Likely, my parents practiced their faith alone, in the quiet of their room, or in 5-minute reflections in the bathroom. It was passed down to us at church, in Sunday school, in pageants, through short stories with good morals. Jesus loves you. He wants to be your friend. You should be his friend. He helps us when we fall.


Helping me was something I understood about Jesus immediately. God was my safety net, my protection from chaos -- from the mentally ill madness that was so often our home. God was a neighbor who knew when to call the police. God was a sleepless night that could save a life. The Holy Spirit stirred in me that when danger came, God would be there. That ultimately, our lives were in his hands, and as long as we chose to stay there, we'd be OK.

God also showed me that when I got on the wrong path, he'd break my car and wait for me to get back on the right one. Over and over in my life (in our lives, now, with TJ), I've seen God intervene and push us along. We prayed, "God, we need out of South Dakota," and a month later we were moving. We prayed, "God, we need this house to drop in price," and the next day it did.

God is my rock and my shelter.

God has become my genie in a bottle.

That's the downside of having a faith built on intervention -- God is less my friend than my lifeline. My final answer. I pray to Him for help, and He helps me. I pray for blessings, for guidance to be on the right path. I pray that His right path is my Right Path, and that I really won't have to do that much.

Beyond, "help me, help me," I don't talk to God a lot. I don't read my Bible. I go to church on Sunday. I pray with my husband at bedtime. I listen to the Christian radio station. But I don't spend much time investing in my faith. I know God brought me to Yakima and I've felt sufficiently On Path to say, "can I just take it from here? You let me know if I screw it up."

We treat prayer as a magic potion. A charm.

Will my child see my Genie Jesus and not understand the point of all this? Will God become to him/her just a bailout clause? That's not what I want for my baby. That's not what I want for me.

The trick is it takes energy to have a relationship with Jesus. Like my best friend, I have to call. I have to pick up when he calls. I have to take the time to read his Status Updates (i.e., the Bible). I have to bother to get to know him, and not sit back and rest on 13 years of Bible stories to pull me through.

I want to give my child a spiritual heritage worth having. I want to demonstrate an authentic faith. I want my baby to know that Bible reading is something you do everyday. That prayer can be outside of eating and sleeping. That God will help you, yes, but that God sometimes just wants to talk. To inspire. To lead. To teach your heart things you didn't know you needed to learn.

That God wants to be everything for you. That only He can be.