Our little girl is about ten weeks old now. One of the fun things to watch developmentally is to see her tune into the world around her. Sometimes she'll be laying on a blanket on the floor and I'll be sitting right next to her. She'll be looking at me, but not really see me--the ceiling fan just over my shoulder is tough competition for an average-looking dad like myself. But then suddenly her focus shifts, and her eyes get really big as she realizes that I'm sitting right there, watching over her, talking with her. She's surprised to see me--in the past few days she's even managed to squeeze out a grin in the midst of all her baby fat.
It struck me yesterday that I spend most of my life looking around at ceiling fans. I spend the majority of my day mired in the netherworld of what I call my everyday life--a combination of worries, trivialities, day dreams, and blog brainstorms. And sometimes in the midst of that I wonder where God is, if he's there at all, or if he cares about this stuff swirling around in my head.
And sometimes suddenly I realize he's right there, the "wide-awake real" is right in my space. He's watching over me. He's with me. I'm so deeply dis-oriented about the nature of the universe that I confuse my life with reality and His life as the abstraction. But when all is measured and judged at the end, I think I'll find that Reality was much different than what I thought it was, and the bulk of what consumes my thoughts and days is not much more than hay and stubble. And most importantly, I think I'll see that my Good Father was always there with me. If only I had eyes to see Him...
1 comment:
I was talking to a student yesterday about something similar to this. We were reading the story in John 5 about the man healed at the pool. When the Jews see that he can walk, they are all up in arms that rules have been broken, and in that, they failed to see the miracle, they failed to see God at work. We talked about how we do that all the time -- we miss God at work over something stupid. Sometimes it's the "normal" stuff in life that distracts us, sometimes it's the ways we EXPECT to see God that distract us from what he's really doing. We try so hard to define God for ourselves, when the Ultimate Reality is that it is HE who defines US. It's a discipline to train our eyes to see past the glitter of the ceiling fans of this world, but it opens our eyes to a bigger more beautiful existance. Good thoughts, AK.
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