Where Is God?

The 4th Sunday of Advent
Today’s Readings: Mi 5: 1-4; Ps 80; Heb 10: 5-10; Lk 1: 39-45

It’s hard to believe that Christmas is just a day away. I hope and pray that this holy season of Advent has been a good one for you… that in some way, you have drawn closer to God and feel his powerful presence in your life.

Not everyone has been so blessed, though. For some people, God still seems remote—or even totally absent. Maybe the cares and worries of the world are pressing upon them especially hard. Maybe they’re sad or depressed. Whatever the reason, I hope my words today will help a little so they can reconnect with our good and gracious Lord.

A few years ago, when my nephew, Simon, was eight years old, he wanted to ask me some questions about God. We were playing in his backyard, in Florida, under a tree. “Uncle Jeff?” he asked. “Where’s God?”

I asked him back, “What did you learn in Sunday school?”

He answered, “My teacher said that God is everywhere, so how come we don’t see him? I thought he was in heaven.”

I told Simon he was exactly right. So next he wanted to know where heaven is. This was getting tougher than a seminary theology exam!

“Well,” I started, “to begin with, nobody has ever seen God.” As soon as I said that, I knew that that would only confuse things more. He came right back at me: “If no one has ever seen God, how do you know there is a God?”

The kid was backing me into a corner. How do you explain a supernatural certainty of faith to an 8-year-old?

Just then, as I thought about how I was going to answer him, I spotted an ant scurrying across one of his toys lying in the grass. “Say,” I said. “Do you remember the last time I came to visit that we watched the ants making tracks through the grass all the way from the patio over to that tree?”

“I remember!” Simon said. “You said they went to the tree to get the sap.”

“That’s right! And there were a lot of dandelions in the grass, too. They were pretty and you wanted to pick them. And while we were watching the ants and looking at the flowers, you asked me if the dandelions could see the ants. Do you remember that?”

Simon nodded.

“And we decided,” I went on, “that the dandelions wouldn’t be able to see the ants, just because they were flowers and they don’t have eyes or a brain. If they could sense things at all, it would only be in the limited way of flowers. So even though the ants were all around them, they probably didn’t know it.”

Simon grinned and he piped in, “And then we wondered if the ants could see us.”

“Yeah. We talked about that, too, didn’t we? And we were pretty sure that the ants couldn’t see us, because they pretty much seemed to ignore us. We decided that for some unknown reason, we must have been outside what an ant can see and know… just as outside as the ant had been to the flower. Neither of them could see what was going on outside their own worlds.”

Simon furrowed his brow. “But we were so close to the ants,” he reminded me. “They even walked all over our sandals.”

“I know,” I said. “But still, they didn’t know we were there because we were outside what they were able to know.”

I could tell that Simon’s wheels were still turning. “But I asked you where God is. Where is he?”

So I said softly, “God is everywhere, just as your teacher told you. And where God is, there is heaven.”

I gave him a few moments to absorb that before I went on. “And you know what? Even though God is everywhere, we can’t see him for the same reason that the dandelions couldn’t see the ants, and the ants couldn’t see us. He is outside all the things a human being can see and understand. But just because we can’t see him doesn’t mean he isn’t there—any more than we’re not here because the ants can’t see us!”

Simon smiled as this understanding dawned. “OK, I get it now. You mean God is outside our world and that’s why we can’t see him—but he’s there really.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

My dear friends—my fellow ants and dandelions! When God seems far away or like a figment of the church’s imagination, it’s good to remember that he is actually the “most real” and “most present” being in all the universe… the blind spot is ours. We don’t have trouble knowing that the wind is real, even though we can’t see it. We don’t have trouble believing in invisible viruses and microbes, especially when we catch something. And for the same reason, we shouldn’t think God away.

How blessed we are to take it on faith that our loving and merciful God is right here among us—always and everywhere. How blessed we are that we can set aside a season to celebrate the awesome day when he slipped into our human world, wrapped in human flesh, for us to see and adore. Let him into your mind and heart.

Or in the beautiful words of Elizabeth in today’s gospel, “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled!”