GodReflection: God Breaks In Monday
Several years ago, my wife asked me to purchase a Kindle Digital Reader.
Who was I to turn down a request to buy a gift for myself? Especially, something that sounded like a new electronic gadget.
It was a calculated strategy to keep my books at bay.
The migration of books from my home office into other rooms of our home stood on the near horizon.
Torn between the feel of a real book in my hands and the intriguing idea of the portability of hundreds of books within one small cover I moved forward with change.
Quickly, I became a bona fide convert.
One of the Kindles’ greatest features is the ease of a free download of the beginning chapters of most any book that catches my eye.
Within seconds, my potential new friend is on my Kindle. Days, weeks, months—maybe years go by. I wait until the timing is right.
Then it is there. I see it at the top of my must-reads.
Normally, I know after my read over the free pages if it’s appropriate to hit the erase button. However, if I am on the trail of something valuable I quickly hit the buy now key.
After nine-month repose on my Kindle, I opened Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. It didn’t take long to push the purchase button.
What caught my imagination was the invitation to see anew all creation as a work of God. To do so helps me refrain from a false division of physical and spiritual. It’s easy to see God in the spiritual and perhaps not so easy to see God’s hand at work in the ordinary.
Every step I take in this world is a step with God.
Meeting God in corporate worship—as important as that is—shouldn’t be limited to the high point of the week. God’s altar is His world. God’s altar is the reality of His presence.
As Taylor expresses it when I walk through my day, “Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.”
I don’t know what I will encounter in her book.
However, I hope by the end of the read my awareness will be raise to new heights to see God in distasteful others, in the routine of the day, in medical appointments, and on both sides of my car windows.
I want to become more aware of God’s presence in and through buildings with steeples and through what we commonly call humanitarian organizations.
I want to see God in the one who cuts my lawn and the seemingly incompetent person who often stand between my purchase and me.
I want to see God’s presence on both ends of the leash as those from my neighborhood walk their dogs on community sidewalks.
I want to raise my antenna to pick up signals of God’s presence in what may seem to be the most irredeemable places.
I want to recognize that God has broken into all reality. He is alive and well. He is present. He works daily at the redemption of His creation.
My prayer is for open eyes and sensitive feet to stumble across God’s unseen grass that covers the earth—and recognize—an outlandish number of God’s altars.
It sounds like a good way to crack my shins don’t you think?
Stay tuned.
Dr. Gary J. Sorrells – A GodReflection on God Breaks Into Reality.
God Reflection 