Closer Than CloseSample

“I in You and You in Me: A Birth Story”

Here we go, I said to myself, terrified.

My wife, Monica, had been laboring for twelve hours with our first son, Ryan. And in a few moments, Ryan would make his entrance into the world.

“You wanna see this?” the doctor asked with a smirk. I had already weighed the options and decided flatly against it. There are some things that are best left unknown.

“Absolutely,” I said before realizing what I was doing.

Just then, and with one last determined push, the little boy whom I had only seen in black-and-white ultrasound pictures emerged from the womb, wrapped in warm, chalky flesh.

I stood stunned, marveling at what I had witnessed and the new life the doctor was holding. The old saying, “I want to eat him up,” came to mind. I was so in love with Ryan, I wanted him in me somehow—I wanted us to be one.

I made my way to the doctor, took Ryan in my arms, and did something that made complete sense to me but seemed to shock everyone else.

I stuck my nose directly in his mouth.

With closed eyes, I inhaled his hot, stinky breath deep into my lungs. After a moment, I exhaled my breath—the breath we had shared—back into his little lungs.

I’ll never forget standing in dizzy wonder: In a very real, mysterious way, I was in Ryan and Ryan was in me.

That’s when it happened.

As I stood there gazing into Ryan’s cloudy, grey eyes, I heard something from deep within me—a voice of sorts—say:

That’s it, Dave. You got it.

A chuckle broke through my tears. I smiled and nodded in perfect agreement with the voice. That’s it, Dave. You got it. I whispered it over and over, staring in wonder at my newborn son.

That day in the delivery room, God gave me a picture of the type of relationship I always wanted to have with Jesus but couldn’t seem to grasp or define—a perfect “union” with him. The thought of being united to Christ was comforting and freeing compared to the many years of striving to be “close” to him.

The truth is, Jesus doesn’t offer us a “close” relationship; he never has. He bids us instead to be perfectly one with him, and there’s a difference. Jesus’ love does not operate from afar. Jesus’ love doesn’t stop until he becomes one with the object of his affection. Jesus wants to be in us and have us in him (see JHN.14.18-20).

In the fiery words of the late Brennan Manning, “The living God seeks more than an intimate relationship with us. The reckless, raging fury of Yahweh culminates, dare we say it, in a symbiotic fusion, a union so substantive that that apostle Paul would write, “It’s no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”

So, how exactly are we united to God?

See you tomorrow.

Complete this sentence: “The thought of being united to Christ makes me feel _________________.” Why did you choose that word?

How is being united to Christ different from being “close” to him?

How would being united to Christ change your understanding of yourself and your relationship with God?