by David L. Miller

The spirit blows where it wills. Sometimes it sweeps across the corner of 55^th and Woodlawn with a beauty that makes me weep.

The day was gray, but less so than my soul. Leaden clouds hung heavily as I trudged the block from my office to the coffee shop to escape my phone, e-mail, and a string of needy souls "just dropping by." By mid–afternoon, I had neither energy nor patience to attend to the passing parade that had taken possession of my schedule.

I took my familiar place, a corner table overlooking the bus stop at this bustling corner on Chicago’s south side. Stirring my coffee, I hoped to nurse 30 minutes of solitude and respite before leaving to teach a class. But I knew the time would not be long enough to lift my melancholy or lingering feelings of failure, a consequence of too little time and too much work.

Both body and soul ached for peace and quiet. But what I got was better.

Watching the corner, I saw a young man, maybe 30, standing with a small blond girl, perhaps four years old. He spoke intently into his cell phone while the little one bounced around him like Tigger. She jumped up and down at his legs, one hand extended high in a universal gesture whose meaning required no interpretation: "I want to talk."

The man finished and gave her the phone. Immediately, an ecstatic torrent of little–girl excitement spilled into the phone. The man — her father I supposed — soon reached to take the phone, but she would have none of it. She bounced and twirled, blond hair flying, the soles of her shoes barely touching ground before again launching her airborne. Unleashing the innocent wonder of her soul, a whitewater rapids of words tumbled over her lips to…whom?

Her mother, I assumed. But since I could not hear, I could only know that it was someone she loved, someone who she knew loved her.

A minute or two passed, and she finished as suddenly as she had started. Snapping the phone shut, she handed it to the young man, and they walked hand–in–hand across Woodlawn. Halfway across, she stopped, reached both hands up to the man. He scooped her up, plopped her on his shoulders and continued across, her little arms assuming a well–rehearsed embrace around his neck. She had obviously been up there before.

I sat transfixed. I had not heard a single word of their conversation. But I couldn’t take my eyes from them, and I wondered, what are these tears in my eyes? A prayer bubbled from my depths: "Tell me, Dearest Friend, is this a vision of Eden or of the final fulfillment you intend for all things?"

I wept, having seen an unspeakable beauty whose Source is the Loving Mystery who is our God. I witnessed the One whose name is Immeasurable Mercy, and whose pleasure is to show up on street corners and bus stops and most certainly in ecstatic four-year-olds.

Geography of grace
That afternoon I saw the living, loving Spirit of the eternal wonder of God, and my weary soul was lifted from self-pity and melancholy to life and vibrancy. When I left the coffee shop I was a different person than when I’d entered, and the coffee had nothing to do with it.

The ever–present Spirit of God breathed life, energy, and joy into my soul so I could continue the day with renewed and holy purpose, able to give my heart fully and lovinglyto the tasks of the day. This gift came from seeing. I saw again that I live in the precinct of epiphany, the geography of grace, where God constantly labors to love me and all that is into life.

The epiphany on 55th Street revealed again the One who is Everlasting Love. That One, who bears the face of our brother Jesus, the Christ, seeks expression in every situation of our lives and in every spoonful of matter to reveal that you and I live in the atmosphere of God. We are enveloped in the all-possessing love of the One who is love itself. How different our lives would be if we always had eyes to see and ears to hear it.

But how did I see what many surely missed? I am convinced that the ideas and images of God that so many people hold can blind their eyes and stop up their ears, leaving them unable to perceive the labor of God in their midst and in the depth of their own flesh.

So many people of faith imagine God sitting outside the normal processes of life. "Out there" or "up there," beyond the universe, God observes the human mess, seeking ways and places to intervene. God is an interventionist, choosing to step in here and there to accomplish God’s purpose in response to our prayers and needs out of divine, unceasing love.

But this idea drains the divine presence from most of life. A god who intervenes here and there is not present and acting with power to accomplish the divine desire in the details of our living. Unfortunately, this god seldom seems to be around when needed.

We carry such childhood images of God as "up there" into adulthood, seldom imagining the intimacy, the nearness of God’s immeasurable mercy. We fail to know this infinitely loving One, who labors constantly at the deep center of life to knit all the fibers of existence into a single harmonious whole, where all things are shaped by God’s love alone. This is what God promises in our Scriptures, making life whole again, uniting all the disparate and whirling elements of life into the love of Christ (Ephesians 1:8b–10; Colossians 1:15–20).

God in the daily–ness of life
The idea of God as interventionist needs to be countered by biblical stories and images that reveal God as all–possessing, all–encompassing Spirit (take John 3 for example), laboring in all things to work out God’s eternal purpose. God is not only "out there" but always "right here," drawing us and all creation into healing and unifying love. We live and move and have our being in the constant and inescapable presence of the Holy One (Acts 17:22–31; Psalm 139). God is present, active, real, laboring in, with, and under all that is, including the most mundane, joyous, or painful moments of our existence.

But have we eyes to see and ears to hear? Too often, the question of God’s absence or presence is asked — or forced — by moments of confusion, grief, or great suffering. And if your controlling image of God is that of an interventionist, God becomes impossible to find — and harder to trust — when you turn to God in great need and wonder: Why doesn’t God do something?

We can little expect to see and know God in moments of great need if we do not regularly attend to God’s loving presence amid our daily life. We will not know where or how to look. The result is a practical agnosticism that is all too common in the church. While we confess our faith in God with the creeds, we are haunted by doubt and remain unsure that we can truly experience God’s presence in the daily routines of living.

We need to use the lenses our faith and tradition provide to see and hear the One our hearts most need. Nothing can deepen our daily lives more than a clear and abiding awareness of God’s presence in the ordinary places and patterns of our habitation. Nothing can do more to infuse our souls with joy and sorrows with solace.

Always with you
What allowed me see God at 55th and Woodlawn was, first, a conviction that I live in the geography of grace because God is always working. Second, I recognized the divine presence because scriptural images live deeply enough in me to shape my vision, so that I might occasionally see what is right before my eyes.

I know God’s divine purpose is drawing all things into a single, loving, harmonious whole, as revealed in Ephesians and Colossians and elsewhere in Scripture. When such unity of love, however small or imperfect, appears in my field of vision, I know: I stand in the presence of great holiness. For here God’s Spirit reveals what God is seeking to accomplish in every moment of time, in every heart, and in this and every universe.

I am reminded that this goes on — God is doing it — whether I see or not. But seeing it moves me into life and hope with a vigor and joy beyond any I can produce. When I see it, I can praise and give thanks to the God who loves beyond my capacity to imagine. When I see it, I am more able to give myself — my heart, will, understanding and abilities — to God’s labor of healing the world, taking my place in this greatest and holiest work.

I sometimes encourage students to use their favorite biblical passages as lenses to perceive not just what God once did, but what God seeks to do in all times and places. One student quoted Paul’s description of the "fruit of the Spirit" as a shaping text in her faith. Paul says, the Spirit’s fruit is "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self–control" (Galatians 5:22–23).

Our view of daily life and our experience of God’s presence are transformed when we take these realities as a tool for seeing what God is doing in the world and in us. Each time I experience the patience or gentleness of another, or am blessed by their peace and kindness, the Spirit whispers, "I am here. And I am working to make and keep your life human, graced and beautiful, no matter what else is happening."

Other favorite verses and stories from Scripture also can be used to develop and heighten awareness of God’s presence. The Spirit uses them to shape in us greater, more constant mindfulness of the Everlasting Love who envelops us like the air.

"I am always with you…to the close of this and every age." In many and various ways, God has chanted that promise throughout Old and New Testaments. Jesus repeated it at the close of his earthly ministry (Matthew 28:20), and we continue to hold it fast.

We need to repeat and remember God’s constant promise…and more. We need ways of seeing that enable us to witness that God is, indeed, near, with us, in us, working, amid all of life.

The Christian spiritual life is a constant looking and listening for the God who is everlasting love, who speaks in all love’s expressions. Seeing the eternal wonder of God near and with us, we are made alive by that Loving Presence who labors in your life—and on the corner of 55th and Woodlawn.

David L. Miller, former editor of The Lutheran, is dean of the chapel and Cornelsen director of spiritual formation at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. You can see his prayer blog at www.prayingthemystery.blogspot.com