I spent the weekend with a guy who had no place for God.

Alan grew up in church. He had a good experience there. But when his mother died way before her time he got mad at God and never came back.

As we discussed the benefits of church; being part of a community focused on love, the availability of outreach activities, the regular, soul-nourishing exercises of sermon and sacrament, Alan said none of this would outweigh his sense of God’s betrayal to him.

And I wondered if God had really betrayed Alan, or if the Church had done a poor job teaching us that our understanding of God is always different than God.

How much easier might it be if God was the Church! But it isn’t and it isn’t supposed to be. Churches are families of children ‘on the way’ who should constantly be reminding us that we’re not to predict God, but accept God, we’re not to play God, we’re follow God, we’re not to harbor certainty about our opinions about God, but be open to God.

On the third Sunday in Advent we brush up against John the Baptist’s confusion about this and we can’t help but come face to face with our own: in what ways do we get angry and frustrated with God – and in what ways might God not be to blame, but our understanding of God? In what ways are we being called to rethink and rediscover God? How might we open ourselves up to a wider vision of possibility in what God is up to in the world around us?