Lent Day Five - Behind Curtain Number One

     I was so excited to attend church this morning.  Since Lent started and I decided to actively seek God first, I have been excited about any opportunity to hear His word.  I attended a women’s retreat at church yesterday, listened to a fabulous speaker and enjoyed fellowship with the other ladies who attended.

     And this morning as I sat in the pew I was looking forward to my Pastor’s sermon.  As I sat there, the sun was shining in on me.  I felt as though I could feel God’s presence through the warmth of the rays of the sun, which I believed He was sending down to me in that moment.

     I smiled at the woman in the pew in front of me. She returned my smile and said that the sun was too bright, and hoped an usher would come by and close the curtains.  And sure enough, two minutes later, the usher did just that and I lost my sunshine.  I considered how differently this other woman and I responded to the same event.  I welcomed the sun as a glorious sign from God.  A reminder that spring was surely on its way.  The other woman saw the sun as an annoyance and preferred the darkness.

     This woman wasn’t wrong and it certainly didn’t say anything to me about her relationship with God.  She just wanted to read her bulletin without the glare of the light.  But I thought about our different responses and I wondered how many times I have missed God’s signs.  How many times was He speaking to me and I closed the curtains on Him?

     God speaks to us in so many ways.  Through scripture, through nature, through books, and people but I am not always aware of his messages.  I close myself off to the signs, sometimes dismissing them as coincidences and sometimes just too caught up in my own schedule to take the time to notice. 

     God is constantly revealing Himself to me.  He offers endless opportunities to feel His presence, to experience the divine.  And yet I have often felt that God was unavailable and hard to find, not realizing that all I ever had to do was open the curtains.