Windows

Reaching for God

A new direction. a new thought process. I am not quite sure what to call this but here we go. We are beginning a sermon series. A series led by me and inspired by God and those who he has inspired. I am reading and praying through a book called Windows of the soul. (Ken Gire)

Ask yourself, how can I experience God in new ways? Perhaps, you have never heard from God. You live a Holy existence in preparation for salvation, but often wonder why God has never spoken to you personally. (NRSV)

20 Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. So, you say, I have never had God knock on my door. I understand that very well because I was that guy several years ago. What I discovered was a god searching for me when I could not hear him knocking. How is this possible?

I have told this story before, but for the sake of having something to say in the sermon, please listen again and pray about what god says to you in this story. Story of little girl who got lost.

Sometimes we can be lost and know exactly where we are. So, what do we do when we are lost and know exactly where we are? Perhaps, we pray that our ears hear. (NRSV)

29 Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

Hearing from God is a little bit like focusing on a painting on the wall and instead of seeing the picture that is painted before you, what you see is the personal story of the person who painted the picture. Ken Gire says, these are the windows of the soul. In order to see the story behind the painting we must practice perhaps the most difficult discipline of all, awareness.

Notice how a child sees a homeless person, and often times society looks right past them. What does this say about us, adults, losing our vision. We might continue to ask ourselves, why has God stopped talking to me? Maybe he never has. The question we might want to ask is why have we stopped listening to God. The way we respect God, is by giving a second look to the neighbor struggling to live life, the way we look at the homeless on the street. Children see something deeper in the images of life, perhaps, they see Jesus in the eyes of the homeless. Perhaps, we have conditioned ourselves to not see Jesus when we look into the eyes of a hurting world. We, as adults, have decided that being adult, all grown-up, means knowing that we cannot help those who are lost. We have not only stopped looking at the person behind the canvas, we have taken a clean white sheet and covered the canvas. We have grown weary of even looking at the painting.