“You were within, but I was without. You were with me, but I was not with you. So you called, you shouted, you broke through my deafness, you flared, blazed, and banished my blindness, you lavished your fragrance, and I gasped.” – St. Augustine, Confessions
I am up early this morning sitting on the back porch because, well, I can. Yesterday the St. Louis area was hit with a record 108 degrees, and the ever-present St. Louis humidity made it feel somewhere up around 113. Not fit for man or beast. It was hard to catch my breath and find good oxygen. Perhaps I need to evolve some gills to better snatch the oxygen out of the air. Yet I know this will pass, as this morning it already has…for a while at least.
Heatwaves, snowstorms and other extremes of nature have a way of getting our attention. They smack us across the face and remind us of the power, majesty and unpredictability of the earth. They recall for us of the continuing cycles of nature, of the gentle spinning and revolving of the earth around its axis and around the sun, taking us into and out of our days, nights, seasons and years. If we think we’re in control, we need to stop and think again. We’re along for the ride.
That’s a powerful message to take in, living in our “me” centered world where we are repeatedly tempted and urged to arise each day and ask: “what can I do for me today?” I don’t mean to suggest that that’s an entirely bad thing, of course. Sometimes we do need to take care of ourselves. Sometimes we need to focus on us. But neither are we called to be the center of our own universes. The weather reminds us of that, as should our lives of quiet contemplation, prayer, awareness and gratitude.
Even for those of us who profess to believe in God, that same God can often seem like the silent partner in our lives. Gifted spiritual writers throughout the ages have written about finding God in our quiet moments of prayer and contemplation, and I cannot argue with that. Indeed, that’s where I most often quiet myself long enough to locate this quiet God of my life.
But St. Augustine reminds us today that perhaps I am making God too hard to find, as if I believe I must somehow crack the code to perfect prayer and there — on the other side of some mystic door — find the divine, huddled in the corner playing hide and seek with us. God is not hiding, we are reminded. Like the weather, God is present and swirls around us. God is within us. God calls, shouts, tries to break through OUR deafness, flares, blazes, banishes OUR blindness, lavishes us with fragrances. This is not a God who does not want to be found. This is a God who desperately wants and demands out attention.
And there can only be one authentic response when we finally understand this: We gasp. We turn and say, “Oh my God, there you are!” We learn to see God where we didn’t see him before, in the wonder and weather of the earth, in our moments of peace and our instances of pain. We learn to speak as Jacob did when, sleeping on the hard ground somewhere in the middle of nowhere outside Beer-sheba, he finally realized that the holy is wherever we are:
“Truly, the LORD is in this spot, although I did not know it! How awesome is this shrine!
This is nothing else but an abode of God.” (Genesis 28:16-17)
Ask yourself in silence: What is God doing to get my attention today?
Dear Steve, this is a belated note,I told myself over and over I must write to thank you for “coffee with Jesus.”.When I read that on your page,I thought I can do that for sure.Now I have several people doing it. It is contagious. It’s the best part of my day,we talk about everything. Thank you for “coffee with Jesus. God love you and yours. Leona Kibler
We’re along for the ride….Steve, that sounds like a lyric for a song. Thank you for this meditation; it really speaks to me today. When you say this is not a God that doesn’t want to be found…..I need to contemplate that. It made me think of some of Annie Dillard’s essays, especially one in which she talks about that feeling that God is absent. There is a lot to look for here, to re-consider, to spend time on the porch just…noticing. Bless you.
God is causing it to rain here, as it has done all weekend. Still that’s good for the garden. And there is God reminding me that no matter how much time I spend out there tidying up, propagating seeds things will only grow because God wills them to do so. And look how much the roses have grown – nothing to do with me that it all God’s work. Thanks be to God!
Thanks for writing, Leona! My grandmother was a Leona and I have never met another one! Enjoy your morning coffee!
Thanks for those thoughts, JL, and for introducing me to Annie Dillard all those many years ago. Perhaps it’s time for m to reread Tinker Creek…
Praying for rain here, Peter, but I guess we need to sun, too. Just not so much would be nice. Grace and peace…
Dear Steve, this is a very, very belated response to what you have written. I have just recovered from a very long spell of mood swings, during which I felt like salt that has lost its saltiness…and, like in Genesis, I was in the swirling darkness of confusion, suffocation, before God separated Light from the darkness!
Indeed, it was difficult to break through my deafness, blindness, fears, stubbornness, as well as sloth! I did not feel that God ‘desperately wants and demands my attention’.
I felt that it was difficult to believe the words, ‘Jesus, I trust in you’, found at the bottom of my Divine Mercy picture!
Finally,(at the beginning of this week), it appears that I have been released from this ‘spell’, and would have probably gasped, and thought, ‘My God…there you are’!
I hope my mood does not swing downwards again, and to let go and go downstream, helplessly. No, I must try my best, because my God is always with me, to fight and move ‘Upstream’.
Thank you Steve for your thoughts so clearly expounded here.
Fantastic! God is never hiding from us, it is quite the opposite of our noise filled lives, just “BE STILL & KNOW”!!!