This is a sight test! Look around the area where you are now sitting, probably a familiar scene. Look hard. Look until you find something you’ve never noticed before. Go ahead, try it. Look until you can say, “I never really saw that before.”
This is a hearing test! Listen carefully. Listen through the familiar and obvious sounds. Listen until you hear a sound you would have missed if you hadn’t been taking this hearing test! Listen until you can say, “I would never have heard that.”
I’m reading a book by Leighton Ford titled The Attentive Life, subtitled Discovering God’s Presence in All Things. One of the characteristics of God is that He’s omnipresent (all places present). There is no place where He is not. You could have fooled me!
There are times I forget God’s around. Oh, I don’t forget to the extent that if you asked me, “Is God here?” I wouldn’t give the proper theological answer, “He most certainly is!”
Practically speaking? That’s another matter! In the busyness and distraction of moment-by-moment living it’s easy to forget God’s around, or at least it’s rather easy to ignore Him. The result is that we often think, speak, act, and even feel as if God’s not there. Our life’s response is little different from the person who doesn’t have an active faith. We can be practicing atheists!
Ford writes, “Perhaps inattentiveness is our greatest sin.” He might be right. So far this day I’ve faced several stressful, challenging situations. You too? Are we facing those situations with the awareness that God is near? Are we handling those situations with an attentiveness to God’s direction and help?
Stop! Look! Listen! It’s up to us whether we’ve seen and heard from God today, throughout today!
How about affirming what King David did in one of his psalms. “Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.” (Psalm 25:4-5)
Dave
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