Have you ever struggled with whether or not there is a
God? Have you ever felt as if God is somewhere "up there" but
distant from where you are "right here?" Maybe your
relationship with God is pretty good but you sometimes feel
like you lead two different lives... the spiritual life of
church on Sunday and the separated life from God with work on
Monday. Where is God and how do we know where to find Him?
Earlier this week I had the opportunity to go hang out in a
tiny little bar for about 2 hours with no air conditioning and
about 350+ people crammed together like sardines. Sounds like
fun, huh? Now if you knew me 10 years ago, to find me hanging
out in a bar or night club might not have been too out of the
ordinary but this was no ordinary night.
It wasn't really the bar that made this night so
significant, it was the reason why all of us where there. In
this place where many usually come to escape reality with
heart thumping music, intoxicating adult beverages, and who
knows what else... these hundreds of suburbanites came
together to learn about spirituality.
Spirituality in a bar... at first it seems almost ironic...
or at least it did until this young, lanky pastor named Rob
Bell took the stage. You see Rob is the lead pastor at one of
the largest churches in America and he is traveling the
country (via bus) to share a message that, "Everything is
Spiritual." Rather than take to preaching a sermon in a
traditional church setting, Rob has purposely picked bars and
night clubs as a place of gathering and communion. Communion
in the sense of fellowship with our community, with each
other, with ourselves and with God.
There's no question that living in our "politically
correct" culture we tend to try and separate our personal
lives, our professional lives and our spiritual lives as if we
are three persons living in one. While that may work for God,
it doesn't really work too well for us humans. When God made
us He breathed spirit into dust. The spiritual became the
physical... all one in the same. We are spiritual beings
living in physical bodies, each of us with our own unique
fingerprint, calling and purpose to contribute something of
meaning and value to each other and to God. It's when we try
to compartmentalizing our lives, leaving God out, that we get
off track and disrupt this flowing spirit that God created us
to be.
So the next time you're wondering where God is... He is
right here. He's right next to you. He's all around you. He's
in the homeless person on the corner. He's in the tattooed
biker at the stop light. He's in you and He's in me. He never
leaves us but we tend to leave Him. Fear, distrust, doubt,
anger... all of these get into the way of God being visible in
our lives. As we try to control and hold on to what we can
manage physically, we can easily loose scope of why we need to
invite God into every aspect of our lives. From our time at
work, our time in traffic, or even those quick moments we get
to interact with each other at the grocery store... God is all
around us. By sharing our loving kindness we recognize the
humility within that links everything in God's creation.
"Everything is spiritual," as Rob exclaimed. "What you seek
you will find." God is right here. He's right next to you...
but you can't find Him if you aren't looking.
Your friend in kindness,
-Daniel
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