Saturday, November 16, 2013

Looking for God in unexpected ways

A father was teaching his young daughter the Lord’s Prayer.  For several evenings they worked on it at bedtime.  The father spoke the lines from the prayer and the little girl would repeat after him.  After about a week, the child decided to go solo and enunciated each word well, right up to the end of the prayer.  Then, as her proud dad listened he heard her say, “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some email.  Amen.”

What a delightful thought.  Some people might be happy to hear from God in that fashion.  The problem is that we might not acknowledge it.  Since people are bombarded with emails they don’t get around to answering.  Fortunately, that isn’t the way God communicates with us.  God communicates with God’s people in silence, and through the written word in the Bible all the time.  At a recent memorial service in the Interfaith Chapel, I shared from a CareNote about grief that is distributed to patient families at the death of a loved one.

The author wrote this advice:  “look for God in unexpected ways.”  The CareNote read:  “We tend to look for God in certain familiar ways.  Consequently, we may think God is absent, yet God is there in ways we may not have noticed.  It may be the kindness of someone who writes us a letter or makes a phone call to see how we are.  It could be the beauty of the stars on a night when we cannot sleep.”

Watch and listen for those moments when the unexpected happens.  I had a moment like that on a recent evening when my wife said, “Mike, how are oxygen and God alike?”  She promptly answered her own question.  “You can’t see God, and you can’t live without God either.”  It was an unexpected moment when I was reminded through Jeannette’s voice about something profound.

Yes, God probably won’t send you an email, but God’s fingerprint might be on it, and you won’t be able to see that either.  Faith is about what cannot be seen.  A small card on my desk reminds “faith is the bird that feels the light and sings while the dawn is still dark.”

Rev. Michael Schneider
With Eagle's Wings

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