Our Gracious, Creative God

[God’s] purpose was for the nations to seek after [him] and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring.” Acts 17:27-28

The longer I know God and read his Word, the more amazed I am at how creative he is at pursuing and relating to us human beings. The Lord drew me to him in graduate school (even when I wasn’t attending Bible studies) through the study of seventeenth-century British poets who loved Jesus and wrote for God’s glory. He revealed his irresistible love through acts of kindness strangers did for my young son when he was in the hospital. He turned on an inner light when I was reading the book of John and answered questions I’d had since my teen years that only he could have known.

Throughout the Bible God specialized in meeting his people in a variety of ways. He spoke through a burning bush, led people by a pillar of fire, sent angels with important messages, and was present on battlefields and in a lions’ den. He is still so gracious in all the different ways he allows us to hear and experience him: through dreams, poetry, music, nature, and his servants. And he allows us freedom in the ways we worship him: with clapping, singing, shouting, marching, and even wordless prayer. In all of this, today’s verse says, God’s purpose is that we would begin to seek him and find him, though he isn’t far from anyone. In fact, he is closer than our very breath, “for in him we live and move and exist.”

How encouraging that there is no limit to God’s ability to reach us and minister to us. We don’t have to be in a church building to find God, although there are some wonderful congregations that can help us find our way to him. He isn’t limited to temples and pews. If we turn to God and earnestly seek him, we will find him because he is always seeking to manifest himself to us. —CHERI

All-wise God, I want to know you more every day. Thank you for all the ways you have drawn me, met me right where I was, and revealed yourself to me. Thank you for the truth that I live and move and exist in you.

If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note. . . . Heaven is a city, and a Body, because the blessed remain eternally different.

—C. S. LEWIS (1898–1963), IRISH WRITER AND LITERARY SCHOLAR

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