Where God Can Be Found

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with our Muslim housemate on the topic of God’s omnipresence. He believed that God is everywhere… except for places that are unclean and therefore unworthy of Him. It got me thinking of the filthy, dirty, smelly, horrendous places I’ve been where God’s presence was still clearly evident, and I told him about them. About the little church built in the middle of a garbage dump in Mozambique, where the people live in the dump because they have no other home, and they sort through the trash every day and try to find a few cents worth of treasures because they have no other job, and how the people in that little church loved the God who valued even them. “For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them” (Matt 18:20). True to His promise, He was definitely present there where those dump-dwellers gathered as His followers. There, in the filth, the stench, the flies, and the smoke (from the burning trash heap), the omnipresent and accessible God was present and loving the worship coming from the voices of the “least of these”.

Okay, said my Muslim friend, but a bathroom? Surely the pure and holy God is not fully present in a bathroom. Such a place is unworthy of Him.

I told him about my old pastor, an ex-Marine who had a powerful encounter with God that completely changed his life… while he knelt weeping on his bathroom floor. Even there, God met with him.

It made me think about how we are God’s dwelling place: “For we are the temple of the living God. As God said: “I will live in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they will be my people” (2Cor 6:16). The pure, holy, sinless God chooses to live in me, an imperfect, struggling, sinful being. While that prompts me to endeavor to make myself more holy and worthy, at the same time it comforts me to know I don’t have to be perfect before He will meet with me. He meets me where I am, in my filth, sin, selfishness, pride, judgmental spirit, He sees everything He hates in me… but somehow He still loves me. He still chooses to dwell in me, and asks that I abide in Him so that I can draw new life from Him and change the way I am. I don’t have to be pure before He’ll come to me. When He comes, He makes me pure.

So where can God be found? Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere.

I can never escape from your Spirit!
      I can never get away from your presence!
If I go up to heaven, you are there;
      if I go down to the grave, you are there.
If I ride the wings of the morning,
      if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
even there your hand will guide me,
      and your strength will support me.
I could ask the darkness to hide me
      and the light around me to become night—
but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.
   To you the night shines as bright as day.
      Darkness and light are the same to you

(Psa 139:7-12).