The last time my parents came for a visit, I was driving them back from the airport and my dad pointed to a hill and wondered out loud, “I wonder why that’s there?” He’s a structural geologist, so this is a common occurrence when driving around with him. He sees the world differently. When he sees a hill, he thinks about why that hill is there –what mechanics inside the earth caused it to form in just that way. But when I look at a hill, I don’t see those geologic processes; I just see a hill. In fact, the only time I generally think about geologic processes is when there’s an earthquake, when the earth’s startling movement is impossible to ignore.
Lately I have been thinking about God’s movement in the world. Not just the big, jolting earthquakes like the parting of the Red Sea, but the smaller, incremental movements that shape and form what is going on in my life and the world around me. Things happen all day long of varying levels of importance. I don’t often stop to ask, “Why is this like that? What is God doing here?” Those questions are usually reserved for big events that stick in our minds – a tragedy or something amazing. To see a broader picture, I must start by looking at what God has already done as recorded in the Bible, in biographies and histories and people’s stories, and in my own prayer journal. Yes, I must review my own journal regularly, because I have found that even in a matter of days I can forget what God showed me. If I fail to write it down at all, then it may be lost forever.
Knowing that God works incrementally in our lives and in human history is not the same as being aware of his movements right here and now. In a sermon right before Christmas, my pastor said “Jesus had emptied himself to become human, so he couldn’t see what the Father was doing unless God showed him.” God must show me, too. It is easy to impose my own ideas of God’s movements when it serves my interests, or when it comes to big drama like politics and world events. I must empty myself of my own ideas, preoccupations, and priorities to make room for “the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 13:11).
I must listen. Listening requires that I actually want to know what God is doing. Who wouldn’t want to know what God is doing? How often do we pray, “Lord, what are you doing?!” with exasperation? Maybe the exasperation is the problem. Sometimes God is doing something that we disagree with. Sometimes he is doing something that challenges our basic assumptions.
The purpose of God’s movement is transformation, and that can be uncomfortable to a person, to a church, to a community, to a nation, to a world. If I welcome the transformation, God will help me to see more and more of his movements. To welcome the transformation, I must be humble and fear him. But often I am not humble, and I do not fear him. And so I am blind and deaf.
But I don’t want to wait for a big earthquake to be forced to ask “Why is that hill there?” So I must ask the questions, try to empty myself, and listen. And that is movement right there.
Facing Jordan 