Hiding in Plain Sight

My youngest was feeling tired and wanted to cuddle.  We laid down on the bed at an odd angle, he with his bottle and me with my arms around him, and looked out the window.  We had a nice view of our big sycamore.  I rarely look out the window at this angle, but there it was.  It filled the whole view, a beautiful array of branches and stems and leaves.  The breeze moved the leaves in unison like a gentle dance.

Laying there, holding this little one of my heart, and finding such beauty hiding above our heads reminded me of the many ways that God's beauty and presence is all around us, but we just don't look up.

Sometimes in life it feels as if God is distant, or not relevant, or maybe just not paying much attention to me.  But the truth is that God is all around, I'm the one missing it.  That can be an easy enough thing to say, but it's another thing to know.  Looking up at that beautiful tree was a tangible reminder of the ways God hides in plain sight.  That tree had been there all the time, right outside my window, but I was the one who didn't see it.  It was only when I was quiet, some time devoted to nothing other than loving and looking, that I found it.

Just like God, that tree is strong, big, and old.  But also just like God it has thousands of little parts, branching in complexity, bigger than my mind can take in.  That tree has been watching over us, steadfast, surveying the changing seasons and our near constant rushing around.  The tree has been gently just watching even as our busy-ness made us frustrated and was more about experience-gluttony than real need.  But the tree never grew frustrated, it kept standing, waiting for us to notice.

The gentle stillness was like a moment out of time, laying on the warm bed, a sweet little one cuddled up to me, a lovely tree showing off its wares, and contemplating a gentle, persistent God.  After a while of just looking, everything changed.  The whole tree changed color right before our eyes.  The dull brown transformed into a bright orange.  It was the sun breaking through the clouds, each leaf catching the low light like thousands of little reflectors.  The effect was a dazzling orange-red of earth tones like someone had hit "enhance" on the world and the tree itself was glowing.

I asked my little son, "did you see that tree change color?"  His breathy "yeah" was an eyes-wide-open exhalation.  We watched the color fade brown to orange and back to brown and burst back to orange.   It wasn't just the tree that was hiding in plain sight, there was a dynamic vitality there, waiting to be noticed.

In that moment, God wasn't just an idea, a dogma, or a being to study, in that moment God was real, shining light into my life and noticing me.  God couldn't be contained in the metaphor of a tree above, standing still, and strong, God lept into the metaphor of the light, of constantly changing, uncontrollable, and unattainable, the energy source of all life on earth.  And then God waited for me to notice.