Today's guest post is by Nancy Shanow - a third year undergraduate student from Northridge, CA.  Nancy's post touched my heart because it summarizes exactly what the purpose of this blog is: FINDING GOD IN EVERYDAY LIFE.  Nancy does an excellent job of depicting a profound spiritual truth in a straightforward and easy to understand manner. If you too are interested in guest posting on my blog, please visit my Guest Post guidelines for more info.

Imagine a father and son spending some quality time together on a beautiful afternoon playing “hide and seek.”  The father is hiding in the best hiding spot ever and the son quickly counts to 20 and scurries around the house to find him. The father can’t help but laugh because he knows his son is never going to look there.

The son searches for 5-10 more minutes, can’t find, and gives up in frustration.  Victory for the father, right?

No earthly father would ever do that and neither would our heavenly Father either.  Actually, He does the exact opposite.

Often we feel that God is in places that we are never going to get to.  We convince ourselves that “He’s too far from us” so we just give up.

But this isn’t hide and seek.  God isn’t hiding from us.  He’s not in some secret hiding spot that only the holiest people can find.  In essence, He’s right in front of us at all times, waving His hands in our faces, saying “I’m here, I’m here!”  And since we often can’t see Him in front of our eyes, He puts Himself in places we look at every day – to try to get our attention.

He’s in everything!  In the nice view we see on our way to work.  He’s in nature – in moments of peace.  Believe it or not, He’s even in the people we talk to on a daily basis.  And He’s in all those places with one mission – He’s determined for you to know Him.

God is not stagnant. He isn't up in heaven, just waiting for you to love Him and know Him all the way down here. God is not an unaffectionate isolated King.  He came to us in order to restore His intimacy and closeness with us.  He came down to our level in order to bring us up to His level and He’s done so out of His great love for His creation.

A wise man once said “If you feel God is far away, then either you moved or He moved.  And it probably isn’t Him!”

Something that I always loved to hear from Pope Shenouda III was this saying in arabic: “erga leh Rabina” – which means “return to God.”  Run back to the arms of the Father that never fails to love you.

Unfortunately, sometimes we leave God behind and keep walking further away from Him.  But He loves us too much to just watch us walk away without trying to get us back.  So He puts anything in our path to teach us to cling to Him – whether that be a trial or a hardship or anything.  Anything to bring His children back to Him.  Why trials?  Because you rarely appreciate the lifeguard until you’ve fallen in the deep end.

To know God more and grow closer to Him – that is what it is all about.  And God isn’t willing to let anything get in His way to make that happen.

For discussion:  in what ways have you seen God reaching out to you/others?