Two mornings this past week I was invited into the K to grade 8 classrooms. What an enjoyable morning. I asked the kids: “Where is God?”
Immediately they pointed to “up there.”
From that response I lead them to see that God is everywhere: outside, in their classroom, within their own home. Is God within you? I tried to point out that God filled their heart and their mind. Then, to underline he point more firmly, I pointed out that God was in their big toe! “Tonight, when you go to bed, look at your big toe. God is in your big toe!”
I know they will remember that instruction.
We have a strong need to alert out people to the presence and the working of God. Too many adults locate God into the church building or into the hospital waiting room, but have a very absent sense of God’s presence in their ordinary working day.
Our religion wants to lead us to an awareness of the daily presence of God. The entire earth shakes and is moved by the daily presence of God. We need some reminders to look and see how God is moving around us. This exercise is so much like your mother instructing you when you were looking for your gym socks as a kid. “They are right in front of your nose.” If you do not look for it, you will not see it.
If you are not looking for God, you will miss God’s presence every time!
Go for a walk in nature. Observe every leaf that moves in the breeze, every Canada Goose that flies over and every blade of grass. This is all created by God. Take a leaf in your hand. Examine it very carefully. This simple leaf is known by the Creator God. This leaf is loved and cherished by God. Hopefully there will arise in you a sense of wonder at how great creation actually is.
If you have an opportunity on a very dark night to look up at all the stars, and the Milky Way, and be awed at how great creation actually is. God has not finished with creation. The vastness and the brilliance of all the stars will make your heart shake with appreciation. How could all this exist? Your mouth drops in awe.
And then you come to humanity. We have been entrusted by the Creator God to care for the earth: all the water, the soils, the plants, all the birds and animals, and all the bacteria in the soil. Look how God believes and trusts humanity with creation.
This is where we need to take people: to daily sense the presence and working of God everywhere. It is not that God is absent from us. God is absent from us because we are not looking for the presence of God in the autumn winds, the migration of the geese and the laughter of children.
God is so close. God is everywhere.
Our daily task is to pay attention. God is right in front of your nose.
No comments:
Post a Comment