Just beneath the surface
The third station of the 2HC journey is oriented around the theme of “Noticing,” a theme emerging from the following conviction: “The universe is permeated with, bathed in, and filled with God’s presence.”[1] It really is true that “we live and move and have our being” in God (Acts 17:28), which means that if anything is missing in a given moment, it’s not God’s presence, but simply our awareness of it. It is not our job, then, to generate or conjure up the divine-human encounter, but to notice, discern, or awaken to the encounter that is already and always taking place—to the sacred essence that is fundamentally baked into every moment of and every thing in existence.
One day, during a period of unhurried reflection, my feet happened to be resting on a footstool. Though I can’t describe the experience fully, it was as though my eyes momentarily gained the capacity to perceive God’s presence teeming throughout each and every molecule, subatomic particle, and vibrating string that danced together to give that footstool its existence. And when I looked up, the entire room seemed super-charged with a previously undetected Divine Presence, playfully hidden just beneath the surface, inviting me to notice and interact with it more often, and giving birth to the following poem.
May this poem’s words and phrases play some small part in awakening your spirit to the presence of God in which you are living and moving and having your being in this very moment.
Just Beneath the Surface
Just beneath the surface,
scarcely concealed,
perpetually on the verge of bursting forth,
there exists a Smoldering Exuberance,
teeming joyously,
hoping to catch your eye, little one.
It is on pins and needles,
anticipating the pause you will one day take,
from your over-anxious struggles,
when your glance will finally happen upon It.
And in that moment,
your countenance will once again shine,
matching Its own,
your ears tingling,
and your soul instantaneously resurrecting,
at the sound of Its once obscured,
now irresistible invitation:
“Come and play!”
[1] Trevor Hudson, Beyond Loneliness: The Gift of God’s Friendship (Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 2016), 100. See also Psalm 139:7-10.
Photo by Menna Ahmed on Unsplash