I led a retreat on praying with pop culture this past weekend. One of the participants, during the prayers of the faithful at Mass on Saturday, prayed that we might all “find God in new things.”
A very appropriate intention for this particular gathering challenged to encounter the Spirit at work in, arguably, an unusual place, no?
But that’s not why her words stuck with me. Perhaps it was the cadence; I couldn’t not hear another, rather Ignatian phrase: “find God in all things.”
As a result, I held those two complementary invitations in my mind:
Find God in all things.
Find God in new things.
I wonder if we become numb to this overwhelming truth that God is in all things. I believe it to be true. But sometimes, for me, I become complacent. Maybe more often than sometimes.
“Oh yes, God is over there, but God is here, too, and so I’m fine to sit in my status quo. God is here, there and everywhere and so I’ll just go about my business and adhere to regularly scheduled programming because God is already here along my chosen trajectory.”
All good. All true. And yet…
God in new things. I hear those words and I feel the call of adventure. I hear the Spirit whispering to me from the wild, uncharted edges of my life’s well-worn map. The fog at the periphery of my mind’s eye — God is there waiting. Beckoning. Delighting.
This is what I propose: We know God is in all things. And we know, too, those people and places that so readily reveal God to us. Let us then not be afraid to depart for new lands, holy ground of an uncharted sort, and discover what God might hope to reveal to us in people, places, experiences and ways of being that we may have previously overlooked. Places that are uncomfortable, unusual.
God in new things — it’s a directional phrase, a trajectory upon which we might set our lives. “How does this type of bird reveal God? Or that neighbor I’ve only spoken with once? What about that movie I’ve put off watching or that book I left at the bottom of the shelf?” Activities, cuisines, conversations and new forms of prayer — from what new “thing” is God calling you?
I wonder, too, if this trajectory-setting phrase might also provide us with a helpful spiritual disposition. As our days are battered with new information and new choices and new stories, instead of turning off and tuning out, might we instead lean into the “new” with a desperate determination to encounter God, even in the most harrowing of moments?
God in all things. God in new things. God in each of us, doing something new. God in each of us, desiring our collaboration.
Will we seek out that new thing God desires for us?
