God Is In All Things
Acts 17:22-31
It’s easy to go somewhere like the top of a 14’er or hike to beautiful Maxwell Falls near between Conifer and Evergreen and have an experience that could be described as an encouter with the divine. A “God moment.” A wonderful thing about living here in the Denver metro is the easy access to some of God’s great handiwork throughout the Rocky Mountains. Whenever we proclaim the good news that God is all-present, we can look west, nod our heads, and agree. Or we can journey through some of the most exquisite landscapes our country has to offer.
It is understandbly more difficult to see that same truth when we come across a trash strewn and blighted lot, or an encampment full of desperate people who are suffering and struggling with homelessness, mental health crises, and even addictions.
We might describe such situations and places as, “God-forsaken” wouldn’t we? But, if we claim to be Christians who believe in the good news of God’s abundant and all-compassing presence, we’ve got to remove the word “God-forsaken” from our vocabulary.
The more difficult truth for us to wrestle with is that absolutely no thing, no place, no situation, no person is ever “God-forsaken.” The violence faced by Palestinians is not God-forsaken. The horrors of a school shooting are not God-forsaken (so maybe we can tone down the rhetoric about how school shootings are a result of there not being enough prayer in schools. Nonsense.). The prisons that are overcrowded in Colorado are not “God-forsaken.” Homeless encampments full of images of scarcity, dysfunction, violence and addiction are not “God-forsaken.”
The challenge for us is to remember that God is present in the things we would rather not witness. And that we cannot love God with all that we are if we cannot love those whom we might otherwise describe as “God-forsaken.” And even more uncomfortably, we cannot deny our love for those who have done evil against us. We cannot deny God’s presence in the cesspool when we would rather be at the mountain lake.
The Apostle Paul preached to the secular Athenians in Acts chapter 17 that God “is not far from each one of us. For ‘in him we live and move have have our being.’” In our worst moments, we still live in the presence and love of God. At those times where we are least deserving of forgiveness, God is still not far from us.
And if God is with us, we are not alone. And if we are not alone, then there is no forsaken place that isn’t replete with God’s presence; there is no bleak time that has no room for God’s hope; there is no horrendous action we can take that God would not be willing to forgive.
No matter what we believe, or how much we have faith, God remains the one who “made the world and everything in it” and “gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.”
Whether or not we can see the splendour of the Rockies, that truth of God’s loving constant presence ought to make it easy for us to understand that every moment is actually a “God moment.”
We are blessed.
