God Ever Present. Made in His Image

Sometimes I look around and feel a sense of despair when I consider what we humans have done to God’s creation. We only have to watch the many nature programmes on TV to understand the impact of industrialisation and humanities greed for stripping the earth of its natural riches. The book of Genesis tells us that when God had finished the creation it was good; alas it took humans to spoil it. However there is more than enough of the original creation left to allow one to look around with a sense of awe as one studies God’s creation. So as I look around and realise that God is in everything, which means also that everything is in God. Two weeks ago I was in the English Lake District for a short holiday, we had taken our dog who decided that at 5AM she needed the toilet, so as I was outside holding her lead I looked skywards; there, right there, was the wonder of God in creation. For with little background light the whole of the night sky was laid bare in front of my eyes, what a wondrous and breath-taking sight! Now we have not managed to mess that up yet.

It is true that we can also see God in other people, not just a few, but in all. Now that is a challenge, we often see faces on the news of murderers and others who have done great evil. How can God, and His beloved Son Jesus, be in there also? Well we are all created in God’s image; not a physical image, but the image of the spirit, that part of us that can think, love and make decisions. It is alas sometimes the terrible decisions that bring us down, but God does not control that part of us otherwise we would be just puppets to His will. He has given us the ability to make a choice, and becoming evil is a choice. I do believe that Christ is there for each of us, and loves each of us. But it is we that reject Jesus, and reject Him time and again; yet Jesus never gives up on us, and remains in each of us, until that time when we are prepared to accept God’s grace, and return that love.

The idea of ever present God is a challenge when things are difficult, I know, and how can an ever present God stand by and see so much pain and suffering? God suffers with us I am sure; He knew the pain of rejection and physical torture and death on a cross. He sees every day the pain we go through as we mourn the loss of those who have gone before. Can all of this be fixed by a wave of His wondrous hand? Well I am sure it could. But what would we become, would we think the same, act the same having never experienced ‘freedom’ from an ‘almighty power’? I do not think so, and so we labour on in this life finding our own way to understanding so that we may be prepared for our relationship with the one in whose image we were made.

Thomas Merton sums this up far better than I could ever do:
“There is not a flower that opens, not a seed that falls into the ground, and not an ear of wheat that nods on the end of its stalk in the wind that does not preach and proclaim the greatness and the mercy of God to the whole world.
There is not an act of kindness or generosity, not an act of sacrifice done, or a word of peace and gentleness spoken, not a child’s prayer uttered, that does not sing hymns to God before His throne, and in the eyes of men, and before their faces”. (Thomas Merton: The Seven Story Mountain)