Have We Outgrown God?

Something is stirring

in the spiritual lives of many Americans.

Perhaps it is no coincidence.

We live in an unsettled world.

Divisions deepen,

certainties unravel,

and the foundations we once trusted

no longer feel secure.

Amid life's shifting tides,

we long for something deeper.

Something enduring.

Something to hold on to.

The search for spiritual meaning continues –

an ancient longing,

stirring in us still.

For many of us,

that longing first took shape

in the God we knew as children.

We pictured him in human form-

an old man with a flowing white beard,

seated somewhere above the clouds,

watching over us.

He heard our prayers,

rewarded our goodness,

and knew when we had done something wrong.

A God we could draw with a crayon,

held within the simple lines

of our childhood world.

But life has a way of coloring

outside those lines.

As we encountered the wider world—

its suffering and wonder,

its losses and surprises—

our early image of God

could no longer holdall what life was teaching us.

Some stopped thinking about God.

Others kept searching,

drawn beyond

the image they once held dear.

For centuries, Christian mystics

have pointed beyond those images

toward a God greater than we can imagine,

closer than our own breath-

a mystery we can never fully grasp.

A Sacred Presence

revealed in love, compassion, beauty,

and the quiet wonder of being alive.

As St. Paul reminds us,

it is in God that

"we live and move and have our being."

As this understanding takes root,

we may feel a quiet invitation,

to share what is awakening in us-

to believe,

to belong.

A deepening faith

can leave us longing 

for others to walk beside us.

For some, this journey leads back

to a religion we once left behind.

For others, it opens the way

to a spiritual home

we had not expected to find.

There, a new understanding of God

may begin to take shape—

in the questions we share,

the prayers we offer,

and the care we give one another.

What we struggle to see alone,

we may glimpse in each other.

And the faith just beginning to stir

finds a place to take root

and room to grow.

Perhaps we have outgrown

the God we once imagined,

but we will never outgrow God.

Even when we feel uncertain,

when old answers fall away

and new ones have yet to come,

God is still beckoning—through our questions,

through one another,

through the quiet longing within.

Whether we walk together

or search alone,

God meets us where we are

calling us further—

into deeper love,

into greater wonder,

into mystery.