We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with God. God walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake.
~C.S. Lewis
The above quote from C.S. Lewis is from a daily email I receive of inspirational and contemplative thoughts called "Inward / Outward." Sharing this with you makes me think of several daily or weekly sources I can pass along to you, and to which you can subscribe if interested. So, in addition to "Inward / Outward" here are a few other links:
Daily Gratitude
Seth Godin
HeartQuotes
On Being
Thought for Today - send an email request to Tom McGehee: thoughtfortoday@cox.net
If you have links you would like to share with me, please do so.
Now back to "God Incognito." Lewis, says "...we can nowhere evade, the presence of God" and "God walks everywhere..." It all sounds similar to Alan Watts' "God playing hide and seek," doesn't it?
When considering God, what is it about "nowhere" and "everywhere" that we fail to understand or perhaps even fear? First, nowhere and everywhere are infinite terms and our minds simply cannot comprehend infinity. The paradox is that even if we could, our comprehension would be a finite understanding of infinity.
Second, nowhere and everywhere assume that we actually know what "where" is. The truth is, ever since Einstein and friends discovered that time and space are not nearly as concrete as Newton and company had previously thought, we live with the boundless possibility that past, present, future, here, there, and where are all "here and now."
In light of this, perhaps the answer to our question is we fear the nowhere and everywhere of God because we do not and cannot understand. So where does this leave us? With "experience!" As Lewis puts it "to remember, to attend, to come [and] remain awake."
The Bible calls it "Immanuel," God with us, through whom we live, move, and have our being! Knowing God is experiencing God, and to experience God is to simply open our eyes (and other senses as well) and look around.
God is the ultimate Master of Disguise!
What a powerful way to focus oneself, kind of like a meditation: "to experience God is simply to open our eyes and look around"...
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