Anyway

If you tell someone that you see God in her (or him), it doesn’t go well.

Programmed with so many messages about flaws and sins and badnesses and otherwise GENERAL UNWORTHINESS, people withdraw as if you’ve placed a curse upon them. And when I say withdraw, I mean not only emotionally but also sometimes physically. A pulling back, a small step away, the raise of a cautionary hand. 

“Oh, NO…” they begin.

We may concede that God loves us. Or helps us. Or forgives us. Or uses us. Or whatever. 

But dwell within us? 

It’s funny, isn’t it? If someone tells me, “I see your mother in you!” I chuckle. I admit they are right. And while I’m sure you don’t need a biology lesson from me, I will just mention here that I am literally made out of material from my parents’ bodies…

AND SO

Why is it that we, who call ourselves God’s children, find it so uncomfortable and difficult to imagine the same about the part of us that is God’s? 

Look, I’m a human, as messy as any of you. But I AM ALSO A SOUL, and when my Soul catches a glimpse of God, she wants to say it. Sometimes she wants to say it OUT LOUD.

Nevertheless, I began to refrain from saying it out loud because it made people uncomfortable, clearly uncomfortable -- anxious even.

I don’t like making people feel uncomfortable. So I stopped saying it out loud.

I was thinking about this while running the greenbelt trails last week when these lines drifted into my head to the rhythm of the Do It Anyway prayer that has become associated with Mother Teresa:

If you tell people you see God in them, they might tell you, YOU DO NOT.
If you tell the world that you see God in it, it may scream at you, YOU DO NOT.

And then I imagined I heard Jesus of Nazareth say:

Tell them anyway.

So I will be sensitive to how someone is feeling, and I will try to say it so gently and with such words that it does not make them feel uncomfortable…But on those sacred occasions when my Soul sees God within someone or something and longs to say it out loud, 

I think…
I think…

I think I will say it anyway.

Maybe you will too.

Maybe you’ll see God in a 20-Something wearing a mask…not for his own sake, for yours.

Maybe you’ll see it in a barista who struggles to hand you your cup touching the bottom only, so you will know her hands never touched the place where you will put your lips.

Maybe it’s the senior sitting on a bench with his badly-behaved little Schnauzer. He’s slowing down, you know. You remember him as the spry man striding down the street every morning with two crazy Schnauzers. Now there is one dog, and a man who needs to rest on a bench mid-walk before continuing on slooooowly. AND YET — the man lifts his gaze to you, beaming, and calls out, A beautiful day, isn’t it?

In the months to come, friends, you will have your own little sacred occasions, occasions when your Soul sees God, if only you will look.

And maybe when we all begin to see God there…and there…and there…AND we begin to say it out loud…

Maybe that’s when everything changes.

After all, the Kingdom is within us and among us.
And it’s okay to say it out loud.

— Photo credit: Tobias Rehbein, Pixabay