Encounter God in Our Everyday Lives

Perhaps the most common question I am asked as a pastor is how to encounter or meet God. As humans, who are continually seeking to follow God, want to, even in a small way, feel connected to God. We want to experience God.

Dream of Wonder by Lisle Gwynn Garrity, A Sanctified Art

Most of us tend to look for spirituality, or a connection to God, in some “set-apart” place. A place we have decided is somehow more holy or a better place to connect to God. It might be on the mountaintops. In the mission field. Or in a sanctuary.

But the last place most of us look is right under our feet, in the everyday activities, accidents, and encounters of our lives.

Because what possible spiritual significance could that weekly trip to the grocery store have? How could a toothache be a door to greater life? What could the routine of mowing the lawn or pulling weeds reveal about faith?

As Barbara Brown Taylor writes in the introduction to her book Altar in the World, “No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are.”

Taylor goes on, “There is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.”

Her point, we can encounter God everyday of our lives, in all the ordinary and routine moments and experiences. We can encounter and experience God wherever we might find ourselves. The answers so many seek are right in front of us, maybe even right under our feet.

Our summer sermon series will explore the chapters of Barbara Brown Taylor’s book, Altar in the World. Each week we’ll focus on a certain a practice, a particular exercise in being human that requires our full selves.

My hope is that this summer we will find the red X under our feet. Or as Taylor puts it, “My hope is that [this] will help [us] recognize some of the altars in this world – ordinary-looking places where human beings have met and may continue to meet up with the divine More that they sometimes call God.”

I hope you’ll join us!

Grace and peace,

Kimmy