Where God Shows Up Part 4

 

Our Buddhist friends have a wonderful phrase: “When the student is ready, the teacher arrives”.  I’ve had lots of teachers over the years.  Some of these professors shaped my soul, others left me feeling cold.  Some taught in formal classrooms, and others, in places where I didn’t expect to learn a lesson. As you look over your artwork and chart of your life, where are the teachers?  Sometimes, teachers in my life didn’t show up in the best of times.  Sometimes the teachers came at the exact moment when I was overworked, overwhelmed, and overextended.  Sometimes the teachers came not with calm, comforting words, but with coals, like the ones that burnt Isaiah’s lips.  Other times the teacher wasn’t a fellow featherless biped at all.  The teacher was a canyon or cave that taught me something I couldn’t learn from a book.  The teacher was a song that my soul needed.  God, for me, is at work in both the tending to our exploration and our moments of quiet.  God teaches in words, people, silence, confusion, slowly figuring something out, and continued mysteries we will never completely resolve but that keep us curious.  Where, when, and how has God been a teacher in your life?  Note this on your artwork/chart of life.  Then, what does that say about God?  For example, if God shows up in a tree swaying in a breeze teaching you how this part of creation weathers storms of life, maybe God is more than an old, white man on a throne with a long beard.  If God shows up to tell you about love in the form of someone who previously hurt you, maybe God is more than a cuddly, cozy blanket of complacency.  How, when, and where did God show up in sanctuaries and beyond the four walls of a building, reminding you that God is never contained or confined.  May this truth awaken You to the fingerprints of the Divine, God who continues to sink God’s loving presence, shaping you in beautiful ways.  Amen.