God in the Crowd

We seek God in various ways and places.  I, like many people, get in touch with God in the natural world.  I often sense his presence in the night sky, and I feel close to him when I’m out in the woods or on the creek.

But there is a better way to meet God.  Not in the beauty of nature, but through other people.

The Bible begins with a tale of a man enjoying fellowship with God in a beautiful garden called Eden.  But the story of Scripture moves us out of the garden and takes us on a journey to our ultimate destination.  At the very end of the book, Revelation does not offer the promise of a return to Eden, but the vision of a city (Revelation 21-22).  The new paradise that Christ is preparing for us is not about sunsets and waterfalls.  It is about streets and gates and walls and people…lots of people.  For all eternity, we will see the glory of God in the midst of a crowd.

We do not find God primarily in a rainbow or a hawk’s flight, because they were not made in his image.  That honor belongs to humanity alone (Genesis 1:26).  We discover God as we encounter his image in one another.  We may, with the psalmist, proclaim that “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).  But nothing compares with the glory of God that we see in another person.  None of us, to be sure, are a perfect and complete image of God, but we each possess a unique reflection of his glory.  Every person we encounter provides us with a new aspect of the God whom we seek.  If you want to find God, look for him in people, not towering oaks or ocean waves.

Not only are we made in God’s image, but he is present in the world through us.  As the apostle Paul wrote, “You are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27).  The message once again is clear: we find God in people.  He touches us and speaks to us in the ordinary messiness of human relationships, more so than in the stars and the wind.

We may resist the truth of finding God in others in part because human relationships can be difficult.  People will disagree with us, anger and hurt us, and fail us.  They intrude into our lives with demands and expectations that can frustrate us.  And it is exactly in these inconveniences that we meet God.  Left to our own devices, we would create self-centered paradises, constructed from our convictions and fueled by our egocentrism.  But God, through his presence in others, interrupts our solipsism with his call upon us, his challenge for us, his shocking new word for us.

Times of personal and quiet reflection, whether in the beauty of nature or the stillness of our living rooms, are essential for our spiritual quest.  But they are not its meat and potatoes.  For that, we must encounter and interact with others.  And that is why we have a church.