Sitting and Wondering.

Isn't it amazing how beautiful life can be sometimes?

And it seems to come when we least expect it, this realization does.

I'm sitting here in Comma Coffee* listening to Chris Heifner play his guitar and sing.  Truthfully, I have no idea what the lyrics are.  But he's up there in front of a crowd of about thirty of forty people praising Jesus with his music.

God is here, and what's equally amazing is the fact that we seldom realize just how true that is.  Robbie said the first night of our mission trip in Vallejo that "God is in every molecule that surrounds us."  God is in the keys that I'm tapping on.  He's in the air carrying Chris' voice to my ears.  He's in the floorboards and the wallpaper and the ceiling fans of this room.  He's across the street in the trees of the Capitol Building.

And I realize that the reason life is so full of these moments of simple, pure beauty is because God intended it to be that way.  God, the most Holy and High, built these realizations into the fabric of our world for us to stumble across and have our breath taken away.

It's a pity that a lot of people view God as some far-off force that floats mysteriously in and out of our lives, sometimes making things better and sometimes making them worse.  It's a pity because I think that such a mindset causes people to miss these pockets of wonder and awe that lie in wait for us.  If only people could realize just how close, just how real, God is.

God is.

There's this sign at Hume Lake that reads, "God Is."  That's it.  When I first saw it a little over a year ago, I was perplexed.  God is what?  I supposed it was a cool object to throw into a picture to remember the carefree days spent at camp... which is exactly what I used it for.

But as the days turned into weeks turned into months, my thoughts would occasionally return to that sign there by that lake in California in which I was baptized.  I reached the conclusion that it was a fill-in-the-blank sort of deal.  You could put whatever you wanted after the words.

God is good.

God is fun.

God is a good banjo player.

God is.

But that still sort of bothered me because of how open to sabotage it is.  What if some jerk wanted to put something stupid after those words?  That'd be no good at all.

But sitting here wondering in Comma Coffee, I think I've finally caught onto what the makers of that sign were trying to get at.

When Moses asks God for His name, God replies, "I am."  I think that's what they were getting at.  That simple, beautiful realization that God cannot be put into words.  He can't be bottled up or stored in the hip pocket.

Because He is.

-Daniel K

*Yes, that's right... I'm now the proud owner of a MacBook.