God is Hiding in Plain Sight
God is Hiding in Plain Sight
Joshua Bell plays violin in Washington DC subway station.
In The Fiddler in the Subway, Gene Weingarten recounts the story of Joshua Bell, a celebrated violinist who traded the grandeur of sold-out concert halls for the humdrum of a Washington, D.C. subway station. With his $3.5-million-dollar Stradivarius in hand and a baseball cap on his head, Bell played for 43 minutes as commuters hurried past, testing whether beauty could transcend context.
Of the 1,097 people who passed, only one—a young woman recognized him, having recently seen Bell perform on a concert stage. Dazzled, she stood nearby, stunned that such brilliance could go unnoticed. [1]
What is it that blinds us to the beauty that surrounds us?
Perhaps, as with the commuters in the subway, we have not been taught to understand and appreciate beauty in forms that we are not accustomed to.
Perhaps our sights are set on future goals and aspirations, to the degree that we forget to live in the present.
Perhaps our own pain overwhelms the beauty we might otherwise see.
Perhaps we are so engaged in our own thoughts and busyness that we don’t see other people.
Perhaps we are too tired to lift our gaze from our feet to see the path ahead.
Perhaps we are simply too complacent.
Regardless of the reason, the sublime is there waiting to be seen, waiting for us to notice and engage with it.
Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning made the following astute observation:
. . . Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries . . .[2]
How might our lives be different if we stopped to notice the fire in every bush?
There is something about our damaged world that strives to block our awareness of God’s loving omnipresence. The frenetic tyranny of the urgent and the race we call life will mould us in its image unless we deliberately slow down and walk with feet bared to feel the holy ground of God in our midst. The apostle Paul reminds us in Romans that we should resist being shaped by this world and instead let God transform our thinking.[3] When this transformation happens, we see with new eyes.
God is the fire in the bush, the gurgle of a brook, the gentle touch of a zephyr breeze, the smile of another person, the unbidden kindness freely given. We can be so busy that we only respond to dramatic signs or obvious events, missing that God has always been in the details of life. The bush has been burning all the time, but we didn’t notice it. The flames of fire have been on the head of every person, but we were looking elsewhere.
We need to see the world with different glasses.
Father Richard Rohr once told of his visit to Saint Catherine’s Monastery[4] on the top of Mt. Sinai (aka Mt. Horeb). It is the Greek Orthodox monastery built on the spot where God appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush and is the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery with a history that can be traced back over seventeen centuries. During his tour of the grounds, his guide led him to the bush in the centre of the compound and said with all sincerity, “This is the burning bush of Moses.” Was the bush 3300 years old? – No. He was saying that God is in every bush – if you know how to see!
If the fire of God surrounds us, then it is also within us. In the parable of the Sheep and the Goats, Jesus reminded his followers that any act of love given to another person is done in the name of God.[5] We give God to those around us in every act of love, every kind word, every thoughtful action. The theology of LOVE propels us to love as Jesus loved. James reminds us that every good work, every loving action proves that our faith is real.[6] We are called to be that spark of fire which shows God to our world. The Bible uses two other metaphors to say the same thing. We are lamps on a lampstand, and cities on a hill. We are God’s light in our world.
So, how do we as seekers of divine LOVE, both discover and imitate God more? There is no better lamp to our feet or light to our path than the life and example of Jesus. He saw in people what they couldn’t see in themselves.
To the enthusiastic and impulsive Peter, he said. “You are a rock.”
To the woman at the well who was thirsty for love, he said, “I am the living water, if you drink from me, you will never thirst again.”
Jesus shows us where to look and how to see.
LOVE is everywhere but only found by the diligent seeker.
[1] Gene Weingarten, The Fiddler in the Subway: The True Story of What Happened When a World-Class Violinist Played for Handouts . . . and Other Virtuoso Performances by America’s Foremost Feature Writer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 360.
[2] Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1857; repr., Oxford University Press, 2008), 246.
[3] Romans 12:1-2
[4] https://mused.com/stcatherines/
[5] Matthew 25:31-45
[6] James 2:18
Faith should be lived out in practice
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