Today's reflection compliments of Bridgett Blake.
He made from one the whole human race
to dwell on the entire surface of the earth,
and he fixed the ordered seasons and the boundaries of their regions,
so that people might seek God,
even perhaps grope for him and find him,
though indeed he is not far from any one of us. (Acts 17:26-27)
Like the magi watching the skies looking for the divine, we are created to find God. The Sufi mystic Rumi put it another way: “what you seek is seeking you”.
We are part of creation but have the unique position of being able to read creation. We can evaluate ourselves and our surroundings. We have metacognition. God created us to find the divine, which is all around us calling our names all the time.
My daughter Sophia visited Kyoto, Japan, her senior year of high school at Notre Dame High School. She sent me pictures of so many intriguing things, so foreign yet familiar. Roadside altars struck me most of all, these small reminders of the divine everywhere. When I hike, I occasionally find myself in a place that seems particularly blessed or holy–a glade with an endangered orchid, a fire tower in the Smokies, a trickle of a stream, a hollowed out cliffside cave.
We universally fumble around with our limited vision, groping for God, articulating together this sense that the divine is all around us, in nature, in the people around us, in our suffering, in our dreams, in our very seeking. God is right here.