The hunger reminds me that there’s more.

I want to go there. But how do I find the way?

When I reflect on my life map so far, I realize that spiritual hunger, the enablement to love and long for a relationship with our Creator, is not just God’s greatest command—it is also his greatest gift. It’s the kind of desire that compelled the psalmist not only to ask, “Whom have I in heaven but you?” but to answer, “Earth has nothing I desire besides you.”

That’s why I began praying for spiritual hunger and haven’t stopped. As my prayers funnel toward heaven, I can’t help but reflect on my own spiritual journey and wonder how much of God I really know and how much of God I simply take other people’s word for or dismiss altogether. If God is bighearted, then why am I tempted to live with a closed hand? If God is surprisingly talkative, then why don’t I take more time to listen? If God is deeply mysterious, then why do I sometimes lose the intrigue?

In the quietness of my own soul, I cannot help but wonder, How much of God do I really know?

If we met on the street, would I even recognize him?

In the humility of honesty and a soul laid bare: I do not know.

Such realizations shake the core of who I am. I’m pointedly reminded of the day an older woman I barely knew asked if my mother was Jewish when she heard my last name.

“No, just my father,” I explained.

“Well, then you’re not Jewish,” she replied. “To be Jewish, your mom must be Jewish.”

I was taken aback. I had a Jewish father, a Jewish grandmother who escaped Poland at the onset of World War II, and I knew how to make a mean bowl of matza ball soup. Even my best friend was Jewish. What more did you have to do to be a half-Jew?

It turned out that the nosy woman was right. Orthodox Judaism embraces matrilineal descent, or the belief that a child’s Jewish identity is passed down through the mother. Only recently has the reformed movement within Judaism embraced patrilineal descent. Regardless, they still require that the child be raised Jewish—which I was not.

The incident left me feeling like a spiritual bastard child. Once the paralyzing effect of the conversation wore off and my mom assured me that I was my father’s daughter, I grew an even deeper desire to understand how these two worlds—that of Jewish descent and Christian upbringing—intersect.

It also left me hungrier for God. What does it mean to be his child? How does that affect my identity, my behavior, the very core of who I am? I knew he was the only one who could offer any resolve.

Deep down inside I still hunger for a true, pure relationship with the Organic God—the One True God. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In him is found the mysterious wonder of the Trinity. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—one luminous essence in whom there is no shadow of change, stirred by the eternal and dynamic relationship of the three persons who live and love completely free of any need or self-interest.