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Which doesn't sing as well. I know the city is a difficult place for many of us to live. Where I'm from is suburbia, which felt like another kind of desert. But access to natural beauty was there, and I miss that. Maybe one reason we have that craving for natural beauty is that it is evidence of God's presence. We see God in many ways, but one of the clearest ways we can see him is in his creation. Paul writes that all creation declares the glory of God. Here in the city we see much of the glory of man; in this context God is confined to the parks. When I first became a Christian, when I first really understood, it seemed like I could get into that presence whenever I asked. He was there every second, that kind of awe and overflowing was very real, very visceral. I remember being in a car around that time, just going through the day, and thinking, Where are you? I didn't mean it in a global sense, I meant, why don't I feel your presence right now? And then right away, boom, there he was. It was like he was on call for me. And all kinds of wild things were happening. I know many people come to the Lord without as much warm fuzziness. And many approach in far more dramatic ways. Anyway a pastor friend of mine informed me that the glow would fade in time. Well, he was right about that. And I have to confess that I kind of take that change personally sometimes. I haven't gotten over it. Now I feel the presence of God, but it's not continual. So I find myself falling into a peculiar habit, which is to think of God as far away, even as an abstraction. I don't really believe God is an idea or a metaphor or any of that nonsense. I know he's a person as real as you and me, and that his light is as real as those candles over there. Still, I want to be in God's presence more than I am. One reason I'm jazzed about Worship in the Round is just because it's a way to focus on him and get there. Kind of a selfish reason to help start a worship service, but…there are other reasons too. Before I wrote this I was thinking, why is it that God is so slow to reveal himself to me, to show his plans? Even to show up palpably in my life? And it’s always dicey to make guesses about why God does something the way he does. But I have this intuition, this sense, that he’s waiting for me to look for him in the other places, and particularly more in my relationships with people I have the chance to reach out to. To see him in his own image. Which is the subject for another meditation. So there’s that. But then I actually look at the times I really felt his presence, knew he was there and had something specific to say to me, the way I used to, and it turns out to be pretty funny. I went through my Palm Pilot to check for the past week. It was Sunday morning. And before that, it was Saturday night. And before that it was last Wednesday. Over the past week the longest I went without feeling God's palpable, fire in the heart, I AM presence was less than three days. So what that tells me is that I am an Israelite. Worse. I am very, very quick to forget when God has shown himself to me. I've been a real adult believer about fifteen years or so. Not long. I know in my head that I’ll get back to the way it was, that the way it was is just a foretaste of being face to face with God. But it’s hard to keep that mattering from day do day. And I haven’t even come close to the dark night of the soul the great theologians describe. Maybe some of you have been through that. Maybe some are in it now. Or maybe you just haven't felt that presence in a long time. What I confess to you tonight is simply this observation of my own fickleness, in the face of God's unchanging love. I forget so easily. Yet my palm pilot tells me that if I seek God, he seeks me. That's what I have seen even though I forget it as soon as I have the slightest chance. —TD
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