Daily Reading for August 4
All of us go through transitions in life. We move away, get married, have children; we get hired and fired; relationships bloom and fracture. Flexibility may be the ultimate spiritual virtue. Because if we wait until things calm down in our lives before seeking to forge a fruitful relationship with the divine, it will never happen. God’s voice and presence is everywhere, even in the midst of the chaos that so often defines our lives.
Eventually I realized that through the chaos of having young children, God opened my eyes to new possibilities and new ways of experiencing the divine. Finding God in the midst of domestic chaos was a revelation that relationship with God can be a very messy affair. And that’s okay. God is just as present in our lives when we walk around the block in pajamas at 2:00 a.m. with a crying baby as in a reflective ten minutes of silence before a worship service. The trick is balance. And recognizing that there is no ordinary time; it is all blessed by God. . . .
I once saw a bumper sticker that read, THERE IS NO SECULAR WORLD. I’m not big on bumper sticker theology—HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS and the like—but this proclamation said it all. There is no secular world. It is all sacred because God pervades everything. The divine presence weaves its way throughout our daily lives. . . . We often see snippets of the truth on the highways and byways of life, just as we do in the midst of domestic chaos. We simply need to open our eyes to the possibilities.
From What Size are God’s Shoes? Kids, Chaos, and the Spiritual Life by Tim Schenck, with a foreword by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton. Copyright © 2008. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com