Proof or Presence

I have started reading Frederick Buechner’s Secrets in the Dark which is a collection of his sermons. My niece’s husband has often spoken of Buechner with great respect and admiration. Every time I visit Half-Price Books in Fort Wayne, I scour the shelves for one of his books. So far, this is the only one I have found, but it is a good starting point.

In “Message in the Stars”, Buechner postulates that even if God were to arrange the stars above us to blatantly spell out GOD IS, it would not be enough for us. We would say, so what? So God exists, what difference does that make to me? He is not part of my life. According to Buechner, what we really need is not proof of God, but the presence of God.

Of course we need both. The good news is that in Jesus we have both. In the incarnation and miracles of Jesus, in his crucifixion and resurrection, in the sending of the Holy Spirit, we have the evidence that God exists and that He wants a personal relationship with us.

Buechner and Ann Voskamp have a lot in common. They both want us to open our eyes to God’s presence in the mundane aspects of our lives; to see His goodness, to feel His presence.  God has been hammering me with this message in the past few years through writers like this. Why is it that churches design worship services to be loud and emotionally charged when really what we need is to  pause in silence throughout the ordinariness of our days and see and sense that God is with us.