where is God?

Question: “Where is God?”

Answer:  “God is everywhere.”

                     Baltimore Catechism

 

Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

                     Psalm 139

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I always find it amusing

and more than a little sad

 

when those who are zealous for God,

or perhaps, if the truth were told,

are zealous for a political and social culture

they fear is fading,

 

piously pronounce that the problem is

that we liberals have “removed” God,

and that all would be well if we would simply

put God back!

 

What they mean of course, is that they want

the privilege of doing their religious thing

in the marketplace.

 

They want to impose their version of prayer

and their version of God on all.

 

I always find it amusing

and more than a little sad

when people proclaim that making people wear masks

“hides the image of God” in the wearer,

 

or insist that if they can’t go to a particular building

at a particular time

on a particular day

and go through a particular ritual

 

they are somehow being kept away from God.

 

Honest to God!

 

God is everywhere.

In everyone

In every thing

 

We cannot move an inch without tripping over Sacred

We cannot open our eyes without seeing Sacred

 

This creation is the incarnation of Love

All of it!  The mountains, the rivers,

the animals,

and even the people

 

especially the people

we Sacred children

we Spirit carriers

 

we too are little incarnations

Imago Dei

 

God is unavoidable

even the Psalmist reminds us

in the darkest, most horrible places

even in the depths

 

It is all, everything we

see, touch, smell, taste, and hear

an aspect of the infinite mystery of God (John Duns Scotus)

 

If we do not experience God

in a place, in a moment, at an event

it is not because God is not there!

 

It is because we have chosen to limit

the way God arrives

(which is such a human thing to do)

 

This day I am

am stumbling over God

constantly

 

I see God

in the hazy air

in the insistent cats

in the person who makes me smile

in the person who makes me despair for the future of humankind

in the chipped paint on the church building

 

I know God is present

in the moment when my heart sings (as the sun rises once again)

and in the moment when my heart hurts (as I watch the news unfold)

 

God is!

Where is God?

Everywhere!