Everyone has my car

Just about anytime we've bought a vehicle, in the weeks and months ahead, I would see one like it just about everywhere we went.  Even way back in the day when we'd bought a Peugeot 505s and an Isuzu Trooper!

There's something about familiarity - it builds as your perception widens. Your perception widens as you become aware of something and your eyes are able to see it more easily.

I probably passed the same amount of vehicles that looked like that before, but now that I drove one myself, I saw it everywhere I went.

God is that same way. Once you see what he's shown you about himself and about you, you see him just about everywhere you go.

A lot of us grow up being trained to see God mainly in a church building.  But as Paul said, God doesn't live in buildings that we make. (Acts 17:24-28)

When you begin to see him for who he is, you don't just look for key words or a certain look from people, you begin to see him in approaches and actions and other places.

You see him in patience, understanding, processes, and for the lack of a better word, love.  You see him in places and in people and moments you didn't notice before - suddenly he's in a lot of places!

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This week I saw him in a person who has gone through the press in the last few whiles.  Beaten up.  Beaten down.  Struggling.  But the person is holding on to God and God was and is with him.  

And the person isn't expecting God to do some kind of big miracle or come in and "fix things", they're just aware that God is with them and loves them and that seems to be enough.

Last week I saw him in someone who had every reason to be as mad as hell about something, but just seemed to come to a place of surrender.  

Not a giving up or throwing in the towel, but a "Okay, this is how things are.  God is still good.  I have food and a place to stay and a lot of blessings.  I can step off the religious treadmill of hoping God is going to load me up with stuff and good feelings.  I'm glad he's with me."

Over the weekend, I saw him in the story one of the people in our gathering shared about what they've been learning through some past and developing family conflict resolution.  

And it was like watching God work in process, in real time, with them and the rest of us in the group.  Bringing us along, sharing with us, inviting us to show him (and each other) what we're seeing.

And there were several other instances like that.  Some large.  Some small.  Some I wasn't too sure about, but there was the sense of "it's okay not to be too sure about it."

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These kinds of periods of seeing come and go for everyone.  

I still see cars like mine everywhere I go now and now I'm not surprised anymore when I see another version of it "out there".

There's something about how your vision changes - what you expect or anticipate shifts - when you understand your vision was narrowed or limited before.

I'm glad to see God in way more places than I did in the past.  Way more places.

Now I understand a little more about that verse in Acts 18 where it says that "it is in him that we live and move and have our very being."

I hope you see that too.