“Where is God in this?” This question used in spiritual reflection makes us look at the world around us, with all its chaos, frustration, joys, and happy accidents, and claim the places that God’s presence is truly manifest. As people of faith, we claim a God that creates, loves, redeems, and dwells in and through the fullness of this world and our lives.
Our claims and our experiences might not always line up, however. All too easily, we assume a lack of God’s presence and find ourselves feeling distant and attention-starved. If we never look for God, we’ll never learn to recognize God’s presence even as we’re surrounded by it. With blinders on, we shut out the awareness of what God might be doing in our lives, leaving us less attuned to God’s presence.
The more we ask ourselves where God is in every event, experience, and person, the more we see the richness of God’s presence in our lives. But we have to start somewhere, training ourselves to name and claim God’s presence when we see it.
This message is adapted from “Experiencing God” written by Megan Torgerson in the September 2012 issue of Gather magazine.