What if God waits
like books upon
library shelves,
like invisible mist
above the lake,
like the aromas of coffee
beneath your nose?
What if God speaks
like the breeze
between grasses,
like the rain upon
sidewalks and cars,
like the shuffle of feet
in hospital halls?
What if God
has never been away
but has fingers
and palms, digging
and planting, unfamiliar
and familiar, new things
in the tired land
of your life?
What if God
is here?Journal with me.
Where was the most unexpected place you felt you encountered God?
Some thoughts.
My biggest struggle is sitting still and not jumping into action. This is probably why most of what I teach is how to develop a life that is prayer, or a prayer that is life, and imagining every moment as a moment of deep connection and rootedness in Christ’s life.
God says this to me a lot: “This is your life. This is your life. Wake up.”
I often hear God saying this in the franticness of the morning as I try to get the kids to school on time. The first time I heard God say this so clearly was about a month ago—though I now see that God has been constantly saying a version of this all my life.
I was stressed. We were almost to the school. I had probably shouted a few dozen times in the course of that morning, “We are going to be late!” Before I made the turn into the drop-off line at 7:43 a.m. I looked in the rearview mirror, saw my kids, and God said, “This is your life. This is your life. Wake up.” It felt like a dagger in my side. I realized how much I’ve let slip through the sands of time.
Odd, isn’t it? That I would hear God when I was most closed off or unaware of God, and yet this was when I needed to hear. I get stuck in the grind of life, and sometimes I have a hard time looking up. Without God’s prompting, I’d miss a lot, and my life would become dust.
God meets us, interrupts us, calls us out, calls us forward, challenges us, or puts us on a healing quest, and we are led to a new understanding of wholeness.
All of my encounters have made me ask the question: “What if God is here?”
God is in the busyness and the stillness of life. God is motion and constant. God is constant and motion. There is no place where God isn’t, and there is no place where God might not be revealed.
I think, if you take the long look, you’ll remember moments that evidence this reality. You may have been at the grocery store, on a flight, walking down your street, singing in church, starting your shift, driving home, or gazing in another’s eyes, and a veil is lifted, and you see this is your life—wake up.
I am becoming more convinced that a life that is prayer and prayer that is life is about developing our senses. Sensing things for what they really are: where God is and where God might be.
What if God is here? How might you look up today and see a new invitation to know God and to be a witness of an awakened life for others? Get specific. How? When? Where?