Where Is God?

We’ve all heard the expression: “Life’s lessons are the best teachers.”   The “hard knocks” we experience in life tend to form us, and hopefully for the better.   We learn from our mistakes, or at least we try not to repeat them.

Harold Kushner, author of “When Bad Things Happen To Good People,” in his 2015 book “Nine Essential Things I’ve Learned About Life,” shares his life’s lessons such as “God does not send the problem; God sends us the strength to deal with the problem.” 

He says, “I don’t find God as many people do, in the beauty and orderliness of nature, the change of seasons, autumn in New England…If I celebrate God as the source of recovery from illness, must I also recognize Him as the source of injury, disease, birth defects [hurricanes].”

He concludes, “I find God in the quiet heroism of Winslow Homer’s fishermen [1885 The Fog Warning], stretching to the limits of human strength and endurance to do what life calls him to do.  I find God in the willingness of so many people to do the right thing, even when the right thing is difficult, expensive, or unappreciated, and to reject the wrong thing no matter how tempting or profitable. 

Where does an ordinary person find that willpower unless God is present, motivating that person to surpass him or herself?…God sends us strength and determination of which we did not believe ourselves capable, so that we can deal with, or live with, problems that no one can make go away.”

I agree with Kushner; however, I’m one who also does see God in the beauty and orderliness of nature.   It’s all part of the awesomeness and wonder of God – a tapestry of diversity and a source of inspiration and peace.   

Pope Francis recognizes the same as well stated in his encyclical on the environment in which he says: “…What is more, Saint Francis, faithful to Scripture, invites us to see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness. ‘Through the greatness and the beauty of creatures one comes to know by analogy their maker’ (Wis 13:5); indeed, ‘is eternal power and divinity have been made known through his works since the creation of the world’ (Rom 1:20).  For this reason, Francis asked that part of the friary garden always be left untouched, so that wild flowers and herbs could grow there, and those who saw them could raise their minds to God, the Creator of such beauty.  Rather than a problem to be solved, the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise…”
 
Like Winslow Homer, God is an artist and the canvass is the earth painted with glory, the sea and land with all the life above, within, and below.

Deacon David Pierce