Under the Pews

I cannot see you.

  I am here.

  I cannot hear you.

  I am here.

  I cannot sense you.

  I am here.

  Where are you then?

  Have you looked under the pews?

  Yes!

  What did you see?

  I saw the floor and some heating pipes.

  I am the ground of your being and the source of your warmth in your soul, yet you prefer the objects you have made yourself rather than the gifts I give you!

There are times when the God appears to be missing and these are hard times.

Paul understands this and gives a message of hope to the Athenians. "Yet God is actually not far from any one of us; as someone has said 'In him we live and move and exist'.” He then goes on to say "and they would look for him and perhaps find him as they felt about for him". The Good News Bible fails to give the flavour of what Paul is actually saying. The phrase he uses in Greek is better translated "as they groped around for him". Like someone who is looking for their spectacles under the pew. 

Paul proceeds by quoting from one of the Athenians poets "We too are his children"

We have all been children at one time and although what am about to say may not apply to all of you, I am sure it will apply to some. Friends were more discardable, when we were young. Fun to have around for a time, but we grew out of them and left them in a cupboard, like toys we had grown tired of. Later when we wished to see them again, we had overlooked the effect of mother, and her desire for keeping things tidy. She has cleared out the cupboard and given the contents to a deserving cause. Friends are important to us and as we become older, we recognise their value. If a friend goes missing, we will search for that friend to ensure that he or she is all right.

However, when we are missing God, we need to pay attention to our thoughts. We lose sight of God when our thoughts are disordered and our attitudes distorted. This occurs when we are under pressure, and resentments are building up inside us. The resentments subside, yet our thought disorder remains. We are colder towards other people, and more neglectful of our responsibilities to love.

We are missing God, and at times like this, we must turn to Him to sort out our thinking. Our first task is prolonged and sincere prayer. It is only in prayer, where we are confessing our thoughts that our disordered thinking begins to take on again the reality that comes from God's goodness. It is impossible to grasp the full extent of His goodness, but we will have experienced it in our lives and know that we are the better for it. In our prayer, we focus our thoughts on His goodness, and remember the goodness that other people have shown us, and our thought disorder dissolves into tears of gratitude and sorrow.

Then we discover that we have work to do: Not mundane work, or routine work, but exciting work that God has planned for us. 

It is actually quite difficult to get hold of the idea that God has planned work for us in our modern society. Work is more often seen as an obligation or a duty in order to serve ourselves or to serve others. It is very hard for us to hold on to the sense of work being a vocation, for it is difficult to sense anything or anyone beyond us. Modern media is revealing to us, in a way that has never happened before, the difficulties of the world. We cannot make sense of it, so we struggle to achieve what we can, without a sense of calling. God is missing so we have to make the best of it.

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