As a priest, people often talk to me about their lives and their problems.  Inevitably, I ask them how their relationship with God is.  I can usually tell from their response if they have a long distance relationship with the Lord.  The language they use reveals that a deep, personal friendship with God is somewhat of a foreign concept.  For example, they’ll say, “Well, I say my prayers at night before I go to bed,” or “I go to church,” or, my favorite, “I talk to the Big Guy in the sky; we’re tight.”

Great.  Saying prayers at night and going to church is a wonderful way to deepen our relationship with God.  But saying prayers at night and going to church does not necessarily mean that we have a deep, personal friendship with the Lord either.  And as for “talking to the Big Guy in the sky,” that’s simply not Christian spirituality; it’s deism.  In fact, therein lay the problem: too many people think God is “out there somewhere” rather than very close to them.

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