After reading several heavy, heavy books about the heavy, heavy load Christianity (and others) says we have on our path to God, I searched Kindle for a lighter inspirational book – a summer reading of the Divine. Such are not hard to find, and might well be one of the major categories of books sold today, right up there with mysteries, adventures, and bodice ripper. But this also makes the choosing harder: which one might be serious about its subject without being pedantic? I believe that the book I finally chose, Intimacy with God: One Man’s Journey, by Rob Oberto, fits the bill perfectly – and literally, as the “bill” on Kindle was only $5.99.
It starts a little too simply – a run-through of a guy’s ordinary life as he grew up in the 1970’s, looking for a path to success from the perspective of a successful family. He has been raised a Sunday Catholic and sent to Catholic schools, not because the family was religious, but because that is what one did in an Italian-American family in Boston at the time. Poised for a great job in computers at the beginning of that era (1979), we expect some sort of conversion – but not like the one he tells us he has. As he is walking the area around Boston University, he hears a voice – a very special voice that is different than mere thoughts in the head. It is the voice of God. “Is this what you want?” it tells him in so many words. The voice continues to plague him over several days; he thinks he might be going crazy, but finally he must admit that it is God, and he must follow the thought: no, it isn’t what he wants, not really. The lives he sees around him are shallow and unhappy, and he knows that awaits him, too, if he were to follow what he thought he wanted. Now he knows what he really wants: to follow God.
And so we run through his life, a series of ups and downs – divinity school, marriage, work, disappointments, insights, failures, and bouts of poor health – and occasional, undisputable (to him) talks with God and Jesus. And more than talks; at one point, he is driving his car and suddenly, he is gone, a mere presence before a dark and swirling cloud. It is God, who again is directing him in his life. He feels, out of the darkness, a heat that almost burns him, that then shows him how he appears to God: a skeleton with a small bit of meat attached to his ribs. This little flesh is his grace, what he has accomplished towards the holy in his life. It is a beginning, but not enough. There is much to do.
He moves with his wife to the Pacific Northwest and there is given several ministries. The last saps his energy to such an extent that he has to stop, sick and listless. He shuts off his inner self from God, angry at what he believes is a betrayal. 12 years go by, and he becomes extremely ill again. After nearly two years of medical exams, they find that he probably has cancer in a cyst on a kidney. He goes in for a biopsy and the probable removal of the kidney, standing beside the bed in which he will become a patient, when he is taken in his senses to a large room with a table at which God is seated. They converse, and here he is told, “You will be leaving this place.” He wonders: to heaven? To where? He returns to his body, has the operation, finds that the cyst in non-cancerous, and at its removal, returns to health. A new ministry, one that will not take too much time, comes his way. He moves, as God has foretold, and then finds his other task: to “tell people that Jesus loves them.” To tell them in a book – this book.
He is also left with the need to understand the trials of Elijah. In the Bible, Elijah is sent to win the people back from Jerusalem’s back- sliding into paganism when the king, Ahab, marries Jezebel and wishes to incorporate the god Baal into the people’s religion. It involves group sex and the blood sacrifice of infants. Elijah is sent to dual with the sorcerers of Baal on Mt Carmel, where he brings back rain after a two year drought and slays the sorcerers. Jezebel then tells him that she will have him killed within a day. He outruns Ahab’s chariots and makes his way to Mt Horeb, aka Mt Sinai, where he meets with God, who tells him: Why are you here? Elijah responds, “Because I have failed you. Only 7000 Israelites have come back to you.” Replies God, “That is all I called from you. I will manage the rest.” (my approximations of the dialogue) It is then that Oberto understands his anger with God, and his real success: that he was not meant to change the world, but only a bit of it; that God will take care of the rest.
And so a bit of his “bit of it” is found in this book. An excellent read for those who want to find a common man who has uncommon talks and appearances before God, now, in our current era. The idea is that the age of miracles, of God’s immediate and human-like presence in our lives, is not gone, but ever- going. And we are convinced: Oberto is astounded and frightened for his sanity in his experiences, and often asks, begs, that they go away. He then follows the voice, and then not, and then learns of life through his trials and errors. He is us, if we want to be – flawed but called, if we listen, called to do that one bit that is our service, be it small or large. The size and success is not for us to judge; rather, our trial is in having faith in what we are called to do, and faith that God will do the rest.
At times in all of our lives, I am sure that this message – that God is as present as ever, and that our small lives are enough if we follow the inner voice - is just the balm we need to keep on going, to keep on believing that we count, and, as God had said to Oberto, to rest assured that we are loved. FK
It starts a little too simply – a run-through of a guy’s ordinary life as he grew up in the 1970’s, looking for a path to success from the perspective of a successful family. He has been raised a Sunday Catholic and sent to Catholic schools, not because the family was religious, but because that is what one did in an Italian-American family in Boston at the time. Poised for a great job in computers at the beginning of that era (1979), we expect some sort of conversion – but not like the one he tells us he has. As he is walking the area around Boston University, he hears a voice – a very special voice that is different than mere thoughts in the head. It is the voice of God. “Is this what you want?” it tells him in so many words. The voice continues to plague him over several days; he thinks he might be going crazy, but finally he must admit that it is God, and he must follow the thought: no, it isn’t what he wants, not really. The lives he sees around him are shallow and unhappy, and he knows that awaits him, too, if he were to follow what he thought he wanted. Now he knows what he really wants: to follow God.
And so we run through his life, a series of ups and downs – divinity school, marriage, work, disappointments, insights, failures, and bouts of poor health – and occasional, undisputable (to him) talks with God and Jesus. And more than talks; at one point, he is driving his car and suddenly, he is gone, a mere presence before a dark and swirling cloud. It is God, who again is directing him in his life. He feels, out of the darkness, a heat that almost burns him, that then shows him how he appears to God: a skeleton with a small bit of meat attached to his ribs. This little flesh is his grace, what he has accomplished towards the holy in his life. It is a beginning, but not enough. There is much to do.
He moves with his wife to the Pacific Northwest and there is given several ministries. The last saps his energy to such an extent that he has to stop, sick and listless. He shuts off his inner self from God, angry at what he believes is a betrayal. 12 years go by, and he becomes extremely ill again. After nearly two years of medical exams, they find that he probably has cancer in a cyst on a kidney. He goes in for a biopsy and the probable removal of the kidney, standing beside the bed in which he will become a patient, when he is taken in his senses to a large room with a table at which God is seated. They converse, and here he is told, “You will be leaving this place.” He wonders: to heaven? To where? He returns to his body, has the operation, finds that the cyst in non-cancerous, and at its removal, returns to health. A new ministry, one that will not take too much time, comes his way. He moves, as God has foretold, and then finds his other task: to “tell people that Jesus loves them.” To tell them in a book – this book.
He is also left with the need to understand the trials of Elijah. In the Bible, Elijah is sent to win the people back from Jerusalem’s back- sliding into paganism when the king, Ahab, marries Jezebel and wishes to incorporate the god Baal into the people’s religion. It involves group sex and the blood sacrifice of infants. Elijah is sent to dual with the sorcerers of Baal on Mt Carmel, where he brings back rain after a two year drought and slays the sorcerers. Jezebel then tells him that she will have him killed within a day. He outruns Ahab’s chariots and makes his way to Mt Horeb, aka Mt Sinai, where he meets with God, who tells him: Why are you here? Elijah responds, “Because I have failed you. Only 7000 Israelites have come back to you.” Replies God, “That is all I called from you. I will manage the rest.” (my approximations of the dialogue) It is then that Oberto understands his anger with God, and his real success: that he was not meant to change the world, but only a bit of it; that God will take care of the rest.
And so a bit of his “bit of it” is found in this book. An excellent read for those who want to find a common man who has uncommon talks and appearances before God, now, in our current era. The idea is that the age of miracles, of God’s immediate and human-like presence in our lives, is not gone, but ever- going. And we are convinced: Oberto is astounded and frightened for his sanity in his experiences, and often asks, begs, that they go away. He then follows the voice, and then not, and then learns of life through his trials and errors. He is us, if we want to be – flawed but called, if we listen, called to do that one bit that is our service, be it small or large. The size and success is not for us to judge; rather, our trial is in having faith in what we are called to do, and faith that God will do the rest.
At times in all of our lives, I am sure that this message – that God is as present as ever, and that our small lives are enough if we follow the inner voice - is just the balm we need to keep on going, to keep on believing that we count, and, as God had said to Oberto, to rest assured that we are loved. FK
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