Looking For God

Day 1 Looking For God

This year I am reading and working through A Year With God: Living Out the Spiritual Disciplines edited by Richard J. Foster and Julia L. Roller. Years ago I read Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard J. Foster, and God used that book in my life, so this one looked like a good choice for the new year.

Today’s passage is Gen. 1:26-28, 31a.  Then God said, Let us make man in our image…….God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” And the author’s challenge at the end of the reading is to ask yourself, “Where did I see God today?”

I considered the reading and the challenge, but what struck me most was the thought that what God made got messed up pretty fast, kind of like our best intentions do sometimes.

When God made creation, he took a whole day to rest and to consider it. He who is perfect determined that his handiwork was not just all good, but very good.  Then too soon, that perfect creation was damaged.  Temptation and sin entered into the world, and that which God had identified as “very good” was suddenly scarred, poisoned, and screaming for redemption like the little girl with blood streaming from scraped knees and bloody hands, mud staining her torn white Sunday dress.  Mama had said “No running,” and now the child must face the consequences.

What I had not thought about until today was how God felt when Adam and Eve made those awful choices, when God realized the pain of the coming consequences.  I think of that mommy of the little girl with the scraped and bloody knees and hands, the ruined dress, how the mommy hurt for her child because nothing would be the same: a ruined dress, scarred and sore knees and hands yes, and a Sunday morning’s peace and joy destroyed.  And then I thought of God’s pain, He who loved perfectly knew all the long-term consequences of those garden choices – such agonizing pain He must have felt, and continue to feel when He sees us make the wrong choices.

Oh, I know that my analogy is not the best maybe, but still there is the parallel, of a mother’s love and God’s perfect love.

So where did I see God today?  That same loving and forgiving God in the comforting and patient eyes of my husband, at the end of prayer pleading for peace, and in the pages of a book as I searched for meaning. God had been there waiting all along, loving me even when I could not see Him. In case you think some earthshaking event happened and you’re worried for me, please don’t. It was just really cool to see how God used this reading today to remind me of His presence.

Where did you see God today?