My renaissance god
A story of Faith and Discovery Written by Emily Snyder
Photographs by Kati Ellis
My first career, and maybe the most foundational definition of who I am, was getting to be a sixth-grade teacher. From end of school day dance parties and exploring great books, to teaching my students how to make their characters come alive and appreciate the power of great handwriting, I LOVED being a teacher!
I have also really loved learning things for myself. One goal I had was figuring out how to distill lessons I wanted my students not just to learn, but to embrace and actually become changed as individuals. It turns out I was probably the one most changed during that season of my life.
The curriculum for sixth grade history included the Middle Ages and the Renaissance time periods. Of course, I had them transform our entire classroom into a medieval castle one year. And of course, I had them lay under their desks with a copy of Michelangelo’s Creation Hands taped under their desks so they could trace it and get a taste of what he might have felt trying to paint the Sistine chapel. (My students will still tell you how madly in love I am with Michelangelo!)
Because religion was a vital and central part of these time periods, we also talked about God.
The accepted belief of God during the Middle Ages was this: if God wanted something to happen, it would happen. The people lived in a small radius of an existence, and they believed they were basically puppets to God’s will.
In contrast, the God of the Renaissance era was a God who gave people great minds to think and create, experiment and learn! This was a God who was a part of daily life, but also a God who expected people to use the minds He had given them.
And oh, how I love that Renaissance God!
In the years since teaching my sixth graders and along my evolving and journeyed career, I have thought about this “ah-ha” definition of God over and over. There were times in my personal journey where I wished for a puppeteer God, and times I longed for the opposite- when I felt frustrated thinking He was a puppeteer God, and I was a victim to the scene.
However, in my emotional wrestles at different times in my life, I have realized just how deeply I believe in a God that wants to have us discern good and evil, wise and unwise through our own experience. That maybe there aren’t such things as mistakes or flaws, but simply the reality of learning for ourselves what it is that moves us closer to God and endless possibilities, versus moving closer to Satan and the death of possibilities. In discerning the life I want to create and getting to know that Renaissance God, I have come through some broken expectations.
When I was 21 years old, I signed up to serve a full-time mission for my church. While I wanted to be married, I also had a deep desire to share the teachings of Jesus Christ with the world. I was asked to live and serve in St. Petersburg, Russia. For young women in my faith community, the assignment is for the duration of 18 months. However, at 10 months, the doctors thought I had a brain tumor, and I was sent home. It was a long hard road not only physically, but emotionally in every way. I was now included in a category of people I hadn’t even known existed: those that didn’t finish their mission.
Gratefully, with incredible support from my family and congregation, I realized that I was in charge of the narrative, and I received reassurance that I had given what had been asked of me. The Lord had received my little offering, my “loaves and fishes.” But little did I know that was just the beginning of owning and creating new narratives with God.
Typically after a mission in my cultural pathway come marriage and family. With subsequent relationships ranging from true engagement and ring shopping, to having a wedding date picked; experiencing handfuls of crushes and reading numerous dating books, marriage was not forthcoming. The years kept ticking by, and feeling like I was defined by what I was lacking (a husband and then children), I struggled to know my value.
Enter the Christian romance novel that rocked my world. It was about a girl who was so focused on getting married than stressing about her relationship with Jesus Christ. At the end of the book, her father asks her if it was more important to her to be married than to be a follower of Jesus? I might have thrown the book across the room in utter frustration and anger. For the first time in my life, the realization that I might have been more focused on marriage as success in my life threw me. Until that moment, I didn’t realize that there truly could be a world that as I focused my life on my relationship with Jesus Christ, I might not find a man who lived and embraced my same beliefs. For the first time, I realized as I put Jesus Christ as my priority, marriage might not happen.
One of the beliefs I hold dearly is that God sees without the constraints of time. As I have engaged in the soul-shaking and heart-molding wrestle of not being married, I have realized that the God I worship is a God that sees all that I am in an eternal view. I believe He always sees my most glorified self, and that this life experience isn’t for me to prove to Him that I can become something, but that this life experience is to prove to ME who HE already knows I am. Because of Him I am constantly amazed of my expanding capabilities and capacities - I have done things my 14 year-old, or 18 year-old, or 25 year-old self could have ever imagined!
There are various verses in the Bible and Book of Mormon that refer to “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob”. I recognize there is an academic and historical power of this phrase that helped separate their God from the many gods of the time.
I learned a scripture study approach from Professor Sommerfeldt who taught to:
read for a set time (with a timer)
open with a question (I often simply ask “what would Thou hast me learn?”)
begin reading and let your heart get snagged with curiosities and questions about what you are reading
write what is happening – the questions, etc
go back to reading (same place with the thoughts or in new places based on your questions / curiosities)
repeat over and over for your set time
finally, end with a prayer of gratitude
With this approach to study, I have learned countless things from the Spirit. And one of them is that the phrase “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” (found in Matthew 22:32 and in the Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 6:4) shows that God has distinct and personal relationships with each of these men.
The experiences Abraham needed to have to know who he already was to God and what he was capable of doing looked very, very different than Isaac’s, which looked altogether different than Jacob’s journey. The impact they each had on their communities, their families, and the rest of humanity were unique. Their heartaches, wrestles, and broken expectations were completely different – and God was for them as exactly who they needed.
This gives me such comfort, and I stand truly amazed this is my same God. The “God of Emily” is one who knows that I long for a hand to hold and gives me words from Isaiah when I am so over being alone, “I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand . . .”
When looking for purpose to my life, He guides me to words such as “For the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and be saved,”(1 Nephi 6:4) and I weep in humility as these words pierce my heart as the perfect words to describe all that I am and hope to be.
My mom once shared with me that when I was about five years old, I was singing a song in church about sharing God’s love with the world. When she looked over at me, I had tears streaming down my face. She was worried and asked what was wrong, assuming that someone had been unkind. I could only say I didn’t know why I was crying other than I felt in my heart there was something so important about that song that I couldn’t help but cry!
Time and time again since that experience when I was only five, He continues to expand my vision for what this entire experience of life is all about. I boldly and humbly proclaim that I know He is real and that my personal life mission is to share with the world how the God I have come to know is accessible and real. I trust that Jesus Christ will come again, and my role in preparing for that return is to emulate Him and His love, His Vision, and His joy in our personal growth and progress. My deepest hope is that people who didn’t know Him but know me instantly recognize Him. And in turn, they will know the God and Father of us all - that Renaissance Father God, who sees and knows all that we already are and shows up uniquely personally and profoundly in each of our lives.
