God is Messing with Us!

I love it when God “messes with us.”

 I recently read “Jesus Freak,” by Sarah Miles. Sarah does some gorgeous theological reflection about her work at the food pantry at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in San Francisco. She describes how she begins to notice God’s presence in the every day. When she would tell her priest, Paul Fromberg, about the times when she felt that God was showing up, he would say, “God is messing with you…”

As followers of Christ, I think we believe in a God who “messes with us” and who is with us and among us and within us. However, we sometimes become blind and deaf  to God’s work with us and for us. (Some  might even say that we should call anything that makes us blind or  deaf to God “sin”). The air we breathe and the sunshine that filters down upon us in the morning is God communicating with us. The question is, do we notice God's work around us?

So, I challenge the notion that anything is coincidental. A friend of mine used to call coincidences “God-Incidents.” I am not that corny, but I think he had a point. Yesterday, for instance, I was standing in line at a government window. I was wearing my collar, so the man in line next to me asked me where I worked. I told him about Incarnation,  gave him my card and invited him to church. Later, when I asked him what he  did, he told me (with some discomfort) that he was a priest in a ACNA Anglican Church (one of the groups that broke away from TEC in the last few years).  Weird!

As we waited in the slow-moving line, we  had a great conversation. (I think we might have even struck up a friendship). I imagine that I am one of just a few Episcopal priests he has talked to recently , given some of the realities of how estranged certain branches of the Anglican family have become. However,  we agreed about many things and even stumbled upon some places where we probably would not agree. However, in that government queue God made a new connection  that could someday further her kingdom or even (one can dream) help to heal some broken places in the Church! (Plus, I met a nice person who is passionate about the Gospel of Jesus Christ!) 

If I say that all these "weird" coincidences are just happenstance,  I am really behaving as a "functional atheist." If I do not acknowledge God at work in happy meetings like the one I had yesterday, I am saying that God is not at work. What abundant grace we find, however, when we become conscious at all times that God is "messing with us!"

Look at your life and see where “God is messing with you.” Perhaps she is talking to  you through a friendship, or something you are reading, or even on the radio. When we cease to see the miraculous as “coincidental” we begin to find God at work in our lives and in the lives around us. God is still speaking  (and messing) with us!

Thanks be to God!

As always, I Love you and am praying for you-

Father Tim+