Heaven Passing Through: Encountering God In The Everyday

May 14

4 min read

My day started at 7:17 a.m. with spam emails and depressing headlines, continued with a dozen meetings and a few hundred messages, and ended with a difference of opinion that seemed important at the time. When the day finally wound down, I decided to steal a few moments of quiet on my back porch.

Staring at the trees, and trying to ignore the neighbor’s leaf blower, a lyric from a Turnpike Troubadours song struck me,

“Don’t take it personal The world don’t turn around you Just hold on to the moment Like it’s heaven passing through.”

This little chorus offered the humility of knowing I am but one little organism in the vast cosmos, and I should not take offense if the universe doesn’t bend to my desires. At the same time the words offered the promise of divine encounter, ripe for the picking, embedded in every breath.

I’d like to think this little moment of peace was the voice of God, a divine encounter with a background of fiddle and steel guitar.

Familiar Whispers

Thinking back on my life, conversations with others, and stories from scripture, I was reminded of how often encounters with God happen in unexpected moments.

Many years ago, a woman walked outside her village in the heat of the day to draw water from a well. She had a rough past, and was doubtless the subject of a lot of gossip and finger pointing. I can imagine the well at midday, though hot and uncomfortable, offered a moment of escape from the town. A man sat down and started talking about water. His name was Jesus. A few moments later she was running through the streets of that same town unashamed, telling everyone she had met the Messiah [1].

At a particularly low point in his life and the history of his nation, Elijah retreated alone to a cave in the mountains. “…A mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire...” Surely all these signs got Elijah’s attention, but they did not touch his heart. He stayed in his cave.

Then, “…and after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.[2]” At that moment, Elijah received instructions from God that transformed his nation. The whisper reached where the storm and the fire could not.

On one occasion Jesus encountered people walking on the road to Emmaus, and talked to them for a bit. While they did not recognize him at first, they later said, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?[3]” Their divine encounter was so surprising they did not even notice it at the time, but could not deny the impact on their hearts.

A God Who Seeks

Divine encounters happen in all sorts of places. A well outside the city, a dusty road, a mountain cave, even my back porch. These are not necessarily places we think of as sacred spaces for formal worship. Hinduism teaches that Brahman, the divine reality, is present everywhere, not confined to temples or holy spaces. The psalmist said, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.[4]” If God is everywhere, then every corner of the universe becomes a temple. And no location is off limits for a divine encounter.

Interestingly, none of these encounters involved people who were actively seeking God. The woman at the well just wanted some water and perhaps a few minutes alone. Elijah was huddled in a cave seeking safety. The disciples on the Emmaus road were just walking home. But God had other plans, and showed up anyway. Zen Buddhism speaks of “sudden enlightenment”, an awakening in the heart that happens unexpectedly, often when someone is not seeking it. Jesus illustrated the heart of God with a parable about a shepherd who actively sought out a single missing sheep. God promises to respond when people seek Him. But perhaps more often, He is the one doing the seeking.

Letting Go

While each of these people were not actively seeking God, they also were not actively avoiding God. They were willing to take a pause, a moment of stillness to make room for divine encounter. I have to be willing to stop the perpetual motion of my life, set aside whatever is on my mind or competing for my attention, and be still. If I’m focused on my agenda, my thoughts, or even the leaf blower, I might not hear the whisper of God. The psalmist wrote, “Be still and know that I am God.[5]” That is both a command to pause, and a promise that God will meet me when I do.

Once I am still, meeting God requires letting go. The woman at the well let go of her plans and spoke with Jesus. Elijah let go of the security of his cave, and came out when he heard a familiar voice. I went to my back porch intent on ruminating about the day’s frustrations. I had a list of grievances with the universe, plans for how my day should go, demands for what I thought God should do. I had to let that go. Hasidic Judaism might say I needed to practice bittul - intentionally setting aside my own desires and interests to make room for the presence of God.

A God that fills the universe does not fit within any box of my design, confined by my plans or preconceptions. Sometimes I must let go of what I think I know about God in order to experience true revelation.

The poet Ingrid Goff-Maidoff once wrote: