Manifestation of Presence

The journey from where I was to where I am took me from the desk to the tractor, from the pulpit to the farm, and from a life centered around the church as a building to a life centered around the cathedral of creation.   And once I made it to the fork in the road which carried me deeply into the woods and open countryside, I came to understand that the journey had not ended, but was still carrying me forward into a land in which I never expected to walk.  Living immersed in the creation each day has been like a baptism which has changed and re-directed my life.    

One of the things learned early on in surprising ways had to do with the sense that God was in the process of revealing Himself.  Ever so slowly I begin to understand that the creation is a manifestation of the presence of God.  As the poet wrote, "Earth is crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God,..."  (Elizabeth Barrett Browning).  Somehow those lines were imprinted on my mind back in high school lit days and have been carried along the journey until these days when they seem like words on the door opening up into the rest of my life.   

No longer am I surprised to encounter the presence of God through the most mundane of moments and things.  A bird floating in the high breezes, a broken about to decay limb on the ground, and the evening highlights on the western horizon all point to the reality that God is moving about this place and in my life.  The only thing required to see are the eyes I never used when I was hurrying, full of busy work, from one task to another.  Here life is slower.  It is more deliberate.  There is silence.  There is solitude.  There is an unmistakable sense of holy presence that calls out from every bush about to be set afire with the holiness of God.