I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.
Comments are always welcomed.
Glimpses of God
Heaven is declaring God's glory;
the sky is proclaiming His handiwork.
One day gushes the news to the next,
and one night informs another what needs to be known.
Of course, there's no speech, no words -
their voices can't be heard -
but their sound extends throughout the world;
their words reach the ends of the earth.
Psalm 19:1-4a (CEB)
I forgot that I might see
So many beautiful things
I forgot that I might need
To find out what life could bring
From "Beautiful Things" by Andain
A few months ago, I came to the realization that I've grown cynical. If one wanted to use religious language, one might say that I was "convicted" of it. Over time, I have lost a lot of faith - not faith in God, but rather faith in people. In the past couple of years, I've borne witness to things that have deeply disappointed me, shaken my faith in humanity, and made it more difficult for me to trust people, religious people included.
One thing that has come back to me over and over again in the past few months - in my personal Bible studies and in preparing for a sermon and a Sunday school lesson - is the Biblical idea that, when God created humanity, God ordained humanity to be the custodians of creation.1 Furthermore, I've learned that, in spite of the fact that, as a species, we've spent thousands of years giving God reasons to be disappointed in us, God has never abandoned the original plan for us to the caretakers of creation.2
I might have lost faith in people, but it seems as though God still has a lot of faith in humanity. If, in my cynicism, I have somehow become "wiser" than God in this matter, then perhaps some "foolishness" would be good for me.
As a state employee, I was able to take a break from work during the week of the Fourth of July. On Wednesday of that week, I had the opportunity to enjoy a late breakfast with my mother and my grandmother at Waffle House. At the booth next to ours, sat a mother with her children. As they got up to leave, one of the children, a little girl, for no apparent reason, walked over to where I was sitting and gave me a hug. It did not matter to her that she had never seen me before that day, nor did it matter to her that I had a different color of skin than she had.
The very next day, I attended a funeral service for a friend who died suddenly. I met her and her husband in a small group a number of years ago, and I had the opportunity to reconnect with both of them not long ago. In the middle of the service, the soloist, another man I had met in the same small group, sang "On Eagles' Wings." Toward the end of the song he got choked up and started to cry, and he could not finish the song. Then something amazing happened: when the soloist would have sung the chorus of the song for the last time, the congregation, without being asked, sang the chorus for him.
One of my coworkers loves to hike. She once told me that whenever she goes hiking, she finds herself awestruck by the beauty of nature. She said that, at these times, she finds herself thinking that there must be a God. Having read a number of the Psalms lately, I think that the poet David must have seen God in the world all around him in the same way that my coworker sees God in nature when she goes hiking.
One night, David looks up at the sky and sees the moon and the stars, and he begins to feel small. He then remembers how much God loves humanity, and he writes Psalm 8.
When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
the moon and the stars that You have established;
what are human beings that You are mindful of them,
mortals that You care for them?3
One day, David witnesses a great thunderstorm. He is reminded of the awesome power of God and writes Psalm 29.
The voice of the LORD is over the waters;
the God of glory thunders,
the LORD, over mighty waters.
The voice of the LORD is powerful;
the voice of the LORD is full of majesty.4
I believe that I somehow saw God in the two events I described from the week of the Fourth. When the little girl hugged me, I believe I caught a glimpse of the unconditional love of God. I believe I saw what Jesus meant when He said that the Kingdom of God belongs to the childlike.5 When I heard the congregation at the funeral finish the song for the soloist, I believe I caught a glimpse of what it means to be the Kingdom of God and the Body of Christ. I once heard that the Church is the community that will sing for you when you are unable to sing, pray for you when you are unable to pray, and believe for you when you are unable to believe.6 The church is the group of friends who carry you to Christ on a stretcher when you cannot approach Christ on your own.7
These two events broke through my cynicism, and they inspired me to look for God in the world around me. Since that time, I have treasured up a number of glimpses of God.
A few weeks ago, I was having a rough day at work. Though I normally take my lunch to work and eat at my desk, I was compelled to go out for lunch. I just had to get out of the office for a while. I went to a restaurant down the street for what I like to call "chili dog therapy." At the restaurant, I saw two ladies from a church where I have preached several times. After I placed my order, I walked over to them to say hello, and one of the ladies slid over in the booth so that I could sit with them. We talked about their church for a while, and they said some encouraging things to me about my preaching. After lunch, I felt much better than I did before I left the office. Maybe it was just a lucky coincidence that I ran into these two ladies while I was having a bad day, but I cannot help but feel as though God was somehow at work.
Last month, I was walking around the local shopping mall, and I saw a tattooed, pink-haired woman bottle feeding her baby at the children's play area. I believe that motherhood, like all forms of self-giving love, is a picture of God's love. Furthermore, I believe that all of us human beings bear the image of God, no matter how "interesting" we might look because of our tattoos, piercings, or hairstyle choices.
Last month, I spoke at another of my home church's sister congregations. Not long ago, this church was on the brink of closing its doors, but now the church is experiencing a revitalization because of people who are willing to dream "God-sized dreams." It is difficult to not see God at work in this church.
My mom has three birds - a parrotlet and two parakeets. One day, I watched as the parrotlet chewed up a strip of paper my mom had placed in her cage. I thought it was comical that she was actually holding the piece of paper with her foot as she tore it up. Normally we only see birds for an instant as they fly through our field of vision, but when we actually have the chance to watch birds for an extended period of time, we can see that our Creator pays a lot of attention to detail, giving each and every bird a personality of her own.
I also see God in my mom's love for her birds. Adam Hamilton recently said that a person's care for animals is a picture of God's care for all of creation.8
One evening, as I sat in a coffee shop, feeling sad, I caught a glimpse of the glory of God as I saw the beautiful colors of the sunset through the drive thru window.
I have also seen God in smiles, hello's, and small acts of kindness from complete strangers, in walking and talking with friends, in expectant mothers, in fathers and sons walking hand in hand, in families' asking for a blessing upon their meal, in acts of hospitality, and in a pleasantly cool summer evenings.
You might be tempted to say to me, "All you're really doing is describing the beauty you've seen in the world."
I would be tempted to reply, "What's your point?"
The television show Joan of Arcadia made its debut in the fall of 2003. In this drama, a teenaged girl named Joan sees God. She might see God as a teenaged boy, a woman working in the school cafeteria, a man walking dogs, a librarian, a little girl, a gothic youth, a clerk at a convenience store, or any number of other people. On every episode, God asks Joan to do something that, at first, seems utterly ridiculous to her, but, by doing what God asks her to do, she helps people in ways she could not anticipate. On the pilot episode, Joan makes a comment about God's appearing to her, to which God responds, "I'm not appearing to you: you are seeing Me." I always thought this statement was profound.
One day, St. Paul was walking through the city of Athens. Amid a plethora of altars dedicated to various deities, Paul spots an altar dedicated "To an unknown god." Paul then tells the people of Athens about the unknown God who created the universe, the God who "does not live in shrines made by human hands" but "is not far from each one of us," the God in whom "we live and move and have our being."9 The psalmist David asks, "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?"10 I once heard Rob Bell say, "We live... in a world drenched in God."11 We can catch glimpses of this God all around us if we are just willing to open our eyes.
Looking for God in the world around me, particularly in other people, has made me hope that other people can somehow see God in me, even if only in a small way. Until recently, I never really understood what it meant for people to glorify God. Now I realize that human beings, all of whom bear the image of their Creator, can, by their misdeeds, make God look bad by association. By contrast, people glorify God when they do the very things God created them to do. When we see masses of volunteers coming together to help people after natural disasters, we want to praise God. On the other hand, when we look back at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Auschwitz, we start to wonder if there even is a God. Is it merely a coincidence that "death of God" theology became popular in the decades following World War II?
Cynicism is, at its worst, a disease that blinds us to any goodness in the world. I have come to believe that, if we want to be cured of cynicism, we must open our eyes to the beauty of God all around us. Albert Einstein supposedly said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is."12 Similarly, theologian Karl Rahner once stated that there will come a time when one must either become a mystic - one who experiences God - or become an atheist.13 I have rejected both cynicism and atheism, so I choose to see the goodness of God in the world around me. I hope that you, the reader, will make the same choice.
Notes:
- See Genesis 1:26, Genesis 2:15, and Psalm 8:5-6.
- See Romans 8:19-21.
- Psalm 8:3-4 (NRSV)
- Psalm 29:3-4 (NRSV)
- Luke 18:16
- Steve Argue. "A Spiritually-Shaped Life." Mars Hill Bible Church Podcast, 02/27/2011.
- See Mark 2:1-12.
- Adam Hamilton. "The Ark, the Animals and the Floodwaters." The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection podcast, 05/11/2014.
- Acts 17:22-28 (NRSV)
- Psalm 139:7 (NRSV)
- Rob Bell. NOOMA Trees | 003. 2002, Flannel.
- http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Disputed
- http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/47417.Karl_Rahner
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