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Finding God!
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Jacob's Ladder (William Blake)
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Finding God seems an odd title, in that it suggests
that maybe God is somehow lost (which is not what I intended!) but
it does cover a multitude of possible alternatives which would have
been a lot more wordy or 'theological' in nature.
Early Christians sought out remote and sometimes fierce
locations in order to establish their monastic communities - even,
with the Desert Fathers, resorting to living atop a pillar or suchlike.
The aim was, among other things to draw close to God. It is difficult
for Christians today to emulate such dedication even if they wanted
to, but is it necessary, this isolation? Do we have to be alone,
in some remote desert place in order to find God?
What started this train of thought was the reading
of a Philip Yancey book 'Finding God in unexpected places'
which, although an excellent read got me to thinking 'Is it we that
find God, or God that finds us?'
I could turn to a host of different Biblical references,
but I want to begin at Genesis 28:10-17 and the story of Jacob's
Ladder, for reasons that hopefully will become obvious later!
10-12 Jacob left Beersheba and went to Haran.
He came to a certain place and camped for the night since the sun
had set. He took one of the stones there, set it under his head
and lay down to sleep. And he dreamed: A stairway was set on the
ground and it reached all the way to the sky; angels of God were
going up and going down on it.
13-15 Then God was right before him, saying, "I am God,
the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. I'm giving
the ground on which you are sleeping to you and to your descendants.
Your descendants will be as the dust of the Earth; they'll stretch
from west to east and from north to south. All the families of the
Earth will bless themselves in you and your descendants. Yes. I'll
stay with you, I'll protect you wherever you go, and I'll bring
you back to this very ground. I'll stick with you until I've done
everything I promised you."
16-17 Jacob woke up from his sleep. He said, "God is
in this place—truly. And I didn't even know it!" He was
terrified. He whispered in awe, "Incredible. Wonderful. Holy.
This is God's House. This is the Gate of Heaven." (The Message)
I'd also like to point us to the Psalms and these wonderful words
from Psalm 139:1-10
1 O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about
me.
2 You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even
when I’m far away.
3 You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything
I do.
4 You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord.
5 You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing
on my head.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand!
7 I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from
your presence!
8 If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave,
you are there.
9 If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest
oceans,
10 even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support
me. (NIV)
If I go on my computer I can go onto Google Earth and look at the
small town in Wales where I live. I can zoom in to see my house
and the roads nearby, and if I zoom out again the view expands to
show the whole town, its castle, the meandering river, the nearby
forest, beach and out to the sea. As I continue to zoom out the
detail gets smaller as a larger land area fills my screen. Eventually
I am left with an image of the United Kingdom on the screen. I can
still see Wales, and I know more or less where I live, but there’s
no detail, I can’t actually see the town.
Let’s expand the picture a little more. Imagine a dark but
clear night sky, full of stars. Obviously we can’t see all
the stars up there; some are way too faint, and positioned out of
our viewpoint. It is estimated that there are around 500 million
stars in the Milky Way, which is the band of stars that we look
into. If I were to hold up a small coin at arms length toward that
night sky, it would block something like 15 million stars from my
view.
There’s only one other galaxy close or big enough to be seen
by the naked eye and that’s Andromeda, about twice the size
of the Milky Way and home to half a trillion stars. Put together,
these two galaxies are two of 100 billion galaxies swarming with
stars.
How big do you feel now?
This is the scale of the universe that God created. That was some
‘big bang!’ But it also emphasises how small our world
is, and by implication how tiny we are.
So, does God have some high tech version of Google Earth that he
can use to home in on earth, and then zoom in to get a view of Wales,
then Carmarthenshire, and eventually to my house? Can he then see
through the roof to check who’s at home today?
The Psalmist was in no doubt. There was no problem with the size
of the universe because God is not like us, he does not exist in
one place at any one time, he is everywhere. Those old religious
paintings hanging in galleries around the world have a lot to answer
for in putting that picture in our minds of a kindly (or sometimes
stern) old man with flowing beard peeping out form behind a large
cloud.
7 I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away
from your presence!
8 If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave,
you are there.
9 If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest
oceans,
10 even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support
me.
The Psalmist was echoing the words that God said to Jacob in our
first reading from Genesis, ‘15 I am with you and will watch
over you wherever you go’
That of course could be either a cause for celebration or worry,
depending on your point of view. What do we feel like about the
idea of God being aware of what we’re doing or thinking at
any moment of the day? Are you quite comfortable or maybe a little
worried about that possibility?
In fact, is that your understanding of God, that he is not that
old gent in the sky as depicted by the master painters of the past,
but a presence around us wherever we are and wherever we go? In
some ways it can be more difficult to imagine him like that than
it is as a physical person.
But how else could God be God of the universe? How else could God
be in all places at all times. We have to personalise God, as have
all generations, in order to begin to understand his love, his majesty
and his power, and because we already have an understanding of what
he is like through the person of Jesus – we have first hand
documentary evidence through the Gospels and Biblical writings;
people who saw, heard and touched him, felt his power, authority
and love whilst he was alive on earth!
‘I am with you and will watch
over you wherever you go’
That was the great hope of the Psalmist. If you flip quickly through
the book of Psalms you will find the writers one minute praising
God for his majesty and power and the next complaining that they
are being hemmed in on all sides by their enemies. But whether the
mood was positive or negative, the glass half empty or half full,
they remembered that their God was with them and that was more important
to them than the fear of the moment. In their despair they cried
out to God to save them, and in their joy they celebrated his salvation
and the blessings that God brought to their daily lives.
Do we find God or does God find us? The evidence of those who were
close to God in the Bible is that God doesn’t need to find
us because he already knows where we are! It’s more of a problem
for God in making himself known to us, because so often we’re
looking in the wrong direction or we are spiritually asleep. Like
Jacob in our first reading from Genesis there has to be a wake-up
call.
What did Jacob say when he woke up?
‘Surely the Lord is in this
place, and I did not know it!’
That's a phrase that I think is worthy of highlighting! How many
times could that be said of our lives? How many times have we wandered
through beautiful countryside without a thought for the creator?
How many times have we been in the presence of a truly wonderful
person who is the very essence of the word 'loving' and not thought
about the very nature of love and its source? How many times have
we taken part in a time of worship and failed to connect with either
the singing or the message? Is it that God wasn't there, or simply
that we failed to recognise his presence?
Let's put those two highlighted verses together and if you can,
memorise them. The one is always true and the other you may need
to bring to mind sometimes...
‘I am with you and will watch
over you wherever you go’
‘Surely the Lord is in this
place, and I did not know it!’
Jacob got a bit of a wakeup call from God, and it wasn't until his
mind cleared that he realised the significance of the occasion.
There are many other passages that we could look at where God surprised
people by being with them in unlikely moments, but I want to just
highlight one because it was to an unlikely person on a journey
that had nothing to do with Christian qualities of love and tolerance,
but rather to do with violence and oppression. This is the story
of Saul's encounter with God, as retold in the book of Acts.
Acts 9:1-15
And the rest, as they say, is history – literally, because
the spread of the church and indeed our understanding of the Christian
faith is so much in debt to this one man, the most unlikely person
for Jesus to connect with.
But it doesn’t stop there, because in order for Saul to become
the person he was intended to be, it needed Jesus to find and connect
with someone else, a Christian called Ananias, who was possibly
asleep at the time.
Ananias was a bit like Jacob in our very first reading, surprised
by a vision from God – but more importantly his ears were
open to listen, and realising that it was actually God speaking
he was able to put aside his fears because he know, like the Psalmist
that ‘I am with you and will
watch over you wherever you go!’
There was no hint of 'God was in this place and I didn't realise
it' with Ananias!
So what can we say about finding God based upon the readings we’ve
heard? I think it’s not so much a case of us going out on
a walk or seeking out the desert places trying to find God, but
being aware, as the Psalmist was, that God is everywhere and at
all times, a constant presence with us despite our often indifferent
response to this fact - and that sometimes he wakes us up out of
our daydreaming and prompts us into action.
To some people it might be that they suddenly feel a call to ministry
or mission, to others it might simply be the feeling that they ought
to do something– visit someone, make a phone call to ask how
a friend is, volunteer to help out at a drop-in centre, offer to
pray for a stranger, give money to an urgent appeal, make some form
of sacrifice for the sake of someone’s wellbeing, be a shoulder
for someone to lean on. If God needs us, he will find us and call
us!
God breaks through into our everyday lives, maybe not in the spectacular
way that he did with Paul, but think of the work that Ananias did
after God’s prompting, and the lasting effect that action
had on the future of this world.
Listen... listen to your conscience, it is a God-given gift to jog
us out of our conplacency, to spur us into action.
Listen... as you read your Bible, because the words that seem to
spring out of the page might be God's prompting for this day.
Listen... as you walk around this world, listen to the still small
voice that whispers into your ear 'Though times might be tough at
the moment, remember that I am with you always'
Listen... as you work or go about your daily life. Needs are revealed
through conversations, moments created to pray for others.
God might be speaking to you, and it might not be now, it might
not be at a convenient time for you, but listen – God is never
more than a whisper away.
‘Surely the Lord is in this
place, and I did not know it!’
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