Gotcha God...

One afternoon, when our son was about three. My wife and him were out on the back patio. It was a refreshing fall afternoon. As he looked up, the look of child-like curiosity became immediately apparent as he noticed the limbs of the tree moving above him. He was puzzled. He looked at her and said, "Mommy, where's God?" After a few various attempts to break down the Divine into three-year-old lingo, she, looked up at the limbs blowing in the wind and said, "Do you see the limbs moving?... They are moving, because the wind is blowing them... Can you see the wind?" To which, he quickly responded, "Nope..." She continued, "We can't see the wind, but we can see the effects of the wind... Likewise, we don't necessarily see God with our eyes, but like the wind, He is always here with us, working, moving, etc..."

Just then, a gust of wind blew threw and a few leaves rustled in the air. Without a flinch, my son jumped up and began running around the patio. His arms began to wave this way and that, along with a skip and a jump, not to mention a joy-filled smile on his face and a giggle that brings life even to the numbest of souls. Then he stopped, looked over his shoulder, turned around and in one giant swoop of the arms, as if grasping the very wind before him shouted, "Gotcha God..."

What if we could approach our days with the same child-like wonder of faith? Looking, listening, reaching, skipping, and most of all "swooping" to capture the God-moments of our day.

God’s Voice is speaking, resounding, even echoing all around us.
Can I sense it?
Fleeting thoughts, feelings, impressions, mental images, even billboards.
Did I see them?
Obscure verses embedded in Scripture, the whispering of a friend, the comment of a spouse, even the babbling of a young child.
Do I hear it?

The old poem of Elizabeth Barrett Browning still ring true,

“Earth's crammed with Heaven,

And every common bush afire with God,

But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

The rest sit around and picks blackberries.

Or, as John Ortberg wrote in his book God is Closer Than You Think, “God wants to be known, but not in a way that overwhelms us, that takes away the possibility of love freely chosen… He often shows up in unexpected ways. He travels incognito… You never know where he’ll turn up, or whom he’ll speak through, or what unlikely scenario he’ll us for his purpose.”

“For over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call,

a premonition of richer living…”

~Thomas Kelly

The question becomes, how do/will I capture the “whisperings” of God in my life?

"Thoughts disentangle themselves
when they pass through the lips and the fingertips."

(Dawson Trotman)