“Patches of Godlight” in everyday life
There is a verse in Romans 11 which I love (and which, by the way, appears as the first line of the Acknowledgements in my PhD thesis): “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36). I love it because I think that it just captures perfectly the true Christian experience – There is deep gratitude, as all good things are from God. There is peace, as all difficulties can be overcome through Him. And there is purpose, as we know that everything we do is in worship to Him.
I find that the verse also reminds us not to overlook the so-called “ordinary things” that we encounter in our everyday lives. If we know and believe that God’s hand is in all things, this should change the way we view the world around us, the people around us, and the circumstances we find ourselves in.
C. S. Lewis in his book Letters to Malcolm argues that God can be glimpsed in the most ordinary of things if our hearts are disposed to do so. This is how Os Guinness summarises Lewis’s point: “A row of cabbages, a farmyard cat, a wrinkled motherly face, a tiled roof, a single sentence in a book—each can be seen as a tiny revelation of God as Creator. Just as fragments of sunlight break through a dark wood, so parts of creation seen for what they are act as ‘patches of Godlight’ in the world” (Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, W Publishing, 1998, p. 189).
Sometimes I think that we humans forget that God does not merely or necessarily reveal Himself through spectacular displays of fireworks. He is an infinitely creative God, and He speaks quietly through the seemingly ordinary as well.
Consider this passage from 1 Kings 19:11-13 in the Bible:
The LORD said [to Elijah], “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
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Do we, in the course of our everyday lives, listen out for God’s gentle whispers? Are we grateful for the simple pleasures of everyday life? Do we even make a connection between God and all the wonderful (“ordinary”) things we see and experience each day? We see design and order in nature, in the way flowers are so intricately formed, in the way the sun rises and sets each day, in the way that birds are so functionally created so that they can fly, in the way that rain falls from the clouds to the ground and then evaporates to return to the atmosphere. We see buildings standing, electric lights working, lifts that save us walking up ten flights of stairs, spectacle lenses that help to refocus light to fall properly on the retinas of people’s eyes – all of which operate on the precise laws of Physics. (And where do we think the “laws of Physics” came from in the first place?) We have people in our lives who care about us and whom we care about. People may try to convince me of lots of things, but there is one thing I know for sure – what the human heart feels is too complex to be the result of molecules and atoms coming together by chance; Someone had to have created us to feel what we do.
Do we make a connection between God and what we see and experience each day? Or do we focus so much on the experience itself that we, as C. S. Lewis puts it, “ignore the smell of Deity that hangs about it” (C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm (1964), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002, p. 90).
It is time for us to take an honest look at ourselves and what’s around us, and to recognise where God’s presence is evident. Dean Nelson in his book God Hides in Plain Sight (Brazos Press, 2009) says:
“Are we paying attention to the everday moments of our lives and seeing God in them, or are we living in such a chaotic frenzy that we hope we’ll have time to look for the presence and mystery of God later, when we have more time – say, when the degree is finished, the kids have moved out, this project is completed, or we retire?
We have to look now. This is really all we have. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us look for, and see him in it.” (pp. 207-208)
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Photograph (by R Tang): Reflection in water, Bunratty Folk Park, Ireland, 2011
The phrase “Patches of Godlight” used in the title of this post is from C. S. Lewis’s book, Letters to Malcolm.
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“We are here to abet creation and to witness it, to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but we notice each other’s beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house.” (Annie Dillard, “The Meaning of Life”, Life Magazine, Dec 1988).
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