Have you ever seen God?  I think I catch glimpses of Him from time to time, though I’m not sure.  His face is often obscured by the humanity surrounding me, the worries and concerns that I carry and my arrogant ability to only see myself.  But yes, I’m sure that was Him that I saw.

The other day we had a single mom and her kids over to our house.  My sons love her sons and they play together though sons are adults and hers are very young.  The youngest boy is taken with my oldest choosing often to want to just sit with him, rest on him.  But my son was not the image of God that I saw.  There was a particular moment when this boy looked at me and smiled.  In the midst of his growing fatigue and childish fussiness, he looked at me and smiled and I saw God smiling.  He was not particularly pleased with me or for what I had done, not admiring my children or our guests.  He was pleased with family, with life, with love.  I think God knows that we are fussy and childish, selfish and even bad.  But He chose for us to walk together, yes to help and serve, but really just to walk together.

I have seen God in the sunrise.  The vast panorama of color and beauty.  Brightness and awe that seems to bathe my senses and release them from the fixation on accomplishment.  His presence, in those moments, renders me insignificant in comparison to the grandeur before me.  And yet, elevates me beyond myself as I know these occasions are shared, intimate, just my God and His awestruck child.

I see Him less now than I have in times past.  When I first came to Him I didn’t know you had to speak to Him in certain ways, using words that only church people understand.  I hadn’t heard that you can’t know HIm or that experiences with Him are products of emotional outbursts and immaturity.  I was still under the impression that if I talked to Him, He would talk to me.  I still believed that if I looked for Him, I would find Him.  My wisdom, my experience and maturity have grown like weeds over the flower of my faith in Him.

Interesting that God first met man in a garden.  Maybe, even then, He saw me, knowing that He would have to pull weeds, cultivate and fertilize the soil around my heart.  Maybe, even now, I can see myself as God does, in the smile of a child.