SEEING GOD

Some years ago I experienced a spiritual Maalox moment. I happened to be walking by the bathroom at home where my 5-year-old was sitting on the potty, deep in thought.

“Everything okay?” I asked, pausing in the open doorway.

“Mom,” he asked, “can God fit in a swimming pool?”

Can God fit in a swimming pool?! What kind of question is that? I thought as I felt the panic slowly starting to rise in my throat. I was caught totally off-guard.

The funny thing was, I had been wondering myself, lately, about the physical nature of God. Where do I see God in my daily life? How is God present to me in each moment?

“Welllllll.…” I stalled for time, trying to appear perfectly calm outside, while inside my stomach churned and my mind raced for the right answer.

Several possible responses occurred to me. “No!” “Gee, let’s think about it” or “Why don’t you go ask Dad?” But all of those were copouts. My time was up. I took a deep breath.

“Well,” I began. “Jesus tells us in the Bible that God is spirit. So some people think of God as a spirit that we can’t see with our eyes. But,” I continued, “many people see the spirit of God in people, in nature, or in animals. So, if you think of God only as a spirit, then I guess God could fit into a swimming pool. But if you see God in people or in nature or animals, then in that sense, God wouldn’t be able to fit into a swimming pool.”

Hey, not a bad answer, I thought, but I knew the real test would be whether he asked the usual dozen or so follow-up questions. None came. Whew!

I’ve thought often since then about the swimming pool question, perhaps because my answer seemed incomplete. Many of us wonder what God looks like, and we struggle at times to “see” God in our lives. The answer to the question of how to see God lies, I think, in knowing God. And it is through Jesus that we know and see God most clearly. Jesus showed us a God of compassion, of grace, and of love for every one of us. And he taught us how to live to be in relationship with – and thereby to know – God. The more I seek to know God, the more I “see” God – often in unexpected ways and in unexpected places.

It is a struggle to live in God’s world. But we are called to know and to see God – in the happy times as well as in times of grief and despair. Our God waits for us with open, loving arms. And I know that the more I love God and know God, the more I see God – in the shy smile of a malnourished Haitian child, on a hike through white-blanketed woods as the snow softly falls, in the soundless flight of hawks as I sit on top of a mountain. And, yes, perhaps even in a swimming pool.

— Laurie Juliana

Courtesy of The Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist