The Nearness of God

There have been times in my life when I felt God's presence with me with every breath that I took knowing that his very Spirit was what powered my being. There have been other times in my life when I wondered where God was and why I felt so alone and heavy burdened. Why is that? The only difference in the the times of my life in which I felt the nearness of God completely and when I felt the absence of God is simply my own state of mind at the given time of the situation. I have learned in my life that in all reality, God is ALWAYS there whether I feel his nearness to me or not. It is at times when I feel the urge to be super in control of every. last. detail. of. my. life. that I feel very distant from God. I am too busy checking off my to do lists, vacuuming my house a hundred times a day, folding the laundry, cooking meals, writing lesson plans, preparing for next week, month, year . . . that I tune God out as if his voice were the intermittent sound of the air conditioner turning on and off. In those times of realizing God was there but ignoring his gentle whisperings, my life felt full of tension, stress, strife . . . but yet, I WAS in control, right? Along with ignoring the gentle whisperings of God, I also ignored those feelings of stress my body was undergoing until . . . SNAP. . . my body said, "ENOUGH," you can not go on in this way any longer. You NEED to stop!!! But how? How could I stop? I couldn't let all the balls in the air come tumbling down for no one else to pick up. It was up to me to keep it all going, right? I think at times we have all felt this way. It is not until our bodies become broken that we stop and listen and realize that our spirits are broken too. We wonder and we cry out, "Oh God, where are you?" We don't hear him at first because we are too engulfed by our own feelings of doubt and pity. As the sobbing turns into a quiet whimper, we begin to hear IT. We begin to hear the whispers of God saying, "I am with you. I have always been with you. Come to me and I will give you rest." As I have grown older, I recognize the signs sooner that I am trending towards doing it all my self and tuning God out. I recognize the empty feeling I begin to feel as I systematically become more like a well oiled machine rather than a human being with the capacity to stop and enjoy life as I go along. I have learned that God's whispers are really in-your-face shouts of life in everything that occurs around me from the quiet stillness of the early morning to the loud boom of construction on the neighbors house behind me. All of the world that we encounter from nature to human beings have a piece of God in them. It still takes my conscience effort to tune in to God and his nearness all around me. It doesn't ever get any easier to make that effort to recognize God in all that I encounter; but it sure is worth it!