How do we find God? Or
maybe the question should be how does God find us? Maybe it takes both, us
looking for God and God finding us.
I’m certain God
knows where we’re at. If God wants us he can find us. The psalmist said there
was no where he could go that God wasn’t already there ahead of him.
But, if we
want to find God how do we? Maybe we should really get this into the simplest
form we can. Let’s say we’ve misplaced something we use every day, like the
keys to the front door. We always have them in our pockets or we leave them
hanging on a hook, the same place all the time.
But this morning
when we went to get them they weren’t there. How do we find them? Most of us
would rush around looking in the most likely places we might have put them
down. Usually that doesn’t work for me. They’re never where I think they should
be.
So, when I’ve
become so exasperated that I don’t know what else to do I sit down, sometimes I
put my head in my hands, and I talk with God. I tell him I’ve looked everywhere
and I don’t know where else to turn. And then I sit and quietly wait…in
silence. I make myself still. I listen. I sit and look around me…and wait.
You might think it
odd; you might think it would never work for you but too many times what I
think I’ve lost forever is found again…right where I left it but could not for
the life of me remember that I’d put it there.
So, if we were
looking for God don’t you think the same practice might work? So many times
when we’re looking for God we think we can only find him in the sanctuary at
church, when, if we’d stop and think, he’s as close to us as our hearts.
I find God in the
early morning, riding my bike out past Leo and Gayle Stuart’s place. I find God
in the song of the red wing blackbird and the meadowlark. I find God in the
wind turbines as they are propelled by that unseen force we call wind. I find
God in the stillness just before the robins wake and begin singing their praise
to the Creator of everything.
God can be found
everywhere, in our everyday lives, in our breath, in our passions, in our
anger, in silence.
We are able to find
God in our every breath, in those murmurs that provide inspiration. God comes
to us like those rumors we hear at coffee with just a whisper and somehow we
know it’s actually God’s voice we hear.
In an instant God
comes with a rush, a gasp, and in a breath God passes by us.
God make his
presence known to us in our passions. God’s like a fire burning inside us,
intense pain, a feeling of heat and desire, a zealous intensity that’s like an
obsession, rapturous, almost a crazed feeling, in passion God passes by us.
Is God present when
we’re angry? If he’s with us in everything else he must be in those places when
we are filled with madness, livid with indignation over wrongs done,
exasperated, incensed, provoked beyond our endurance…God passes by in anger.
But it’s in the
silence, the hushed quiet, the still, muffled, suppressed quiet, when we’re at
peace, calm, placid, cool, unruffled...in silence God passes by.
To find God listen,
look, see, and behold: in the everyday of life are the everyday theophanies,
those dramatic appearances of God who passes by and calls us on the way.
Can you hear it,
the Silence? Listen, for it holds deep certainties. Not those that come
whirling in like truth tornados, whipping up storms, their eyes on doubts
leaving the heart’s landscape littered with broken hopes. Not those that come
in earth-moving, land-shaking, ground-churning spectacles to cast cracks like
gaping wounds through carefully constructed dreams. Not those that come with
cackling, crackling glee, their greedy glow and unquenchable appetite blazing a
destructive trail to cauterize the very roots of charred visions.
Can you hear it,
the silence? Listen. And know for certain that within it lies a truth worth
hearing. Listen. Wrap yourself within its folds, let it lead you to an open
door and know you go in peace.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
