A few years ago someone asked me what drives me forward in life. It was a fair question considering that I was talking about our sense of identity, destiny and dreams. Now, there are many things that I believe are driving us forward at any given time. For some of us it may be our faith, our belief in God or our sense of calling or vocation. We feel compelled to do what we do, or to live as we live, because of our faith. For some people it can be their sense of duty and responsibilities. They understand that they need to contribute, to provide, to secure for them and for theirs, so they work, they struggle, they achieve in order to fulfil their sense of duty. For others it may be passion; they go ahead according to what makes their heart beat faster, gives them strength to continue and a reason to exist. For others is may be a sense of justice, or injustice, that motivates them to continue to go ahead forging a different future. And I believe that we all share, in one way or another, these and other reasons driving us forward in life. But I realized one thing as I considered the question: in many ways, at every season of my life and especially as an adult, that thing that moves me forward is… questions.

Not just the need to find an answer, mind you, but the journey of exploring the many possibilities and seeing where each answer I find along the way continue to move me ahead, creating different possibilities. Questions, that lead to answers that lead to questions…

One of the most important, loud and insisting questions that I live in search for answers is: where is God? I have heard this question being asked in many different ways and with different motivations behind it. Sometimes it’s people honestly searching for God in the midst of the chaos of their lives. Sometimes it’s people asking out of their anger when faced with difficult circumstances in their lives or in the world. Sometimes it’s people confused by the number of churches or denominations or religions in the world! I have asked myself that questions many times. Where is God when I am feeling down? Where is God when I’m suffering? Where is God when the player in my team misses the easiest of shots- doesn’t God know how important this game is??? Where is God, when evil seems to overtake the world? And most of the times, I realize the answer doesn’t lead to a new revelation, but to a new sense of awareness. The facts, actually, don’t change, but my perception of reality does.

Think about the moments in your life when your breath is taken away. Those moments in which you become overwhelmed by beauty, joy, a sense of beyond… I remember being a teenager, travelling with my youth group doing evangelism in our holidays (what a bunch of wild beasts we were!) and this one afternoon in which we had a few hours free and we went to the beach. The glorious sensation of being in the water, floating, being taken up by the waves and feeling strangely free… and then this sense of movement, of unexpected presence, behind our group. As we turned around, suddenly the water exploded as dolphins jumped out of it, swimming around us. We were surrounded by those incredible creatures, bigger than we could imagine through TV screens or by looking at them at the distance. So we did what most normal people would do… we went closer, swimming farther into the ocean, enjoying those precious moments, as we knew that those don’t come too often… I remember the first time we went to Victor Harbor, South Australia, and we saw a whale not far from the shore… the moment when the tail went up to come down powerfully splashing water everywhere and feeling so small, so little in comparison.

I also remember standing at the top of a rubbish dump, probably 18-20 feet tall, in the middle of a summer day; the horrible smell that seemed to be going inside my skin, the dryness in the air, the dust covering miles ahead and seeing all those people moving like ants trying to find something that will keep them alive. Overwhelming sadness, brokenness, and new sense of feeling small and insignificant, powerless before a reality I couldn’t comprehend.

I remember standing in the hallway of a hospital seeing my best friend walking up and down the corridor waiting for news of his pregnant wife- he had fainted a little while ago and he was asked to step out of the room! Now the midwife appears to call him inside, “it’s time” she said and I looked at him and said “go!”, smiling as I knew the next few minutes would change him completely- three weeks before it was me standing in his place, ready to help deliver my baby girl and seeing my whole world transformed in seconds, as if my heart had decided to go live outside of my body. The feeling of stillness in holding her in my arms and feeling her skin against mine, knowing that life had just gotten a lot weirder and more beautiful, feeling privileged and inadequate all at once.

I remember the first time that I was called to visit someone in the hospital because that person was passing away. The drive up to the hospital, in a long prayer that sometimes contained words but for the most of it was just holy silence. The deep sense of significance as I was showed the way to the room by the nurse, and looking into his eyes and seeing a faint smile appearing in his face. “What can I do for you?” I said, honestly just not knowing what to say! “Pray with me”. So I did. The last prayers. The last amen. The eyes closing one last time and imagining that the next thing he would see would be… heaven. I stayed a bit longer, I was standing on holy ground so I lingered there a few more minutes.

There are the highs and lows, moments of extreme joy or deep sadness, and in between there are all those moments we consider average… making my kids breakfast as they wake up slowly and remembering all those early moments in which I was looking at them sleep as babies, or putting them to sleep and seeing them hugging each other just because, walking our dog and receiving puppy love or doing the dishes and seeing my family together and feeling overwhelmingly grateful… and suddenly in the midst of it all you realize you are catching glimpses that show you that those moments have a different sense of fullness, or depth, of significance. Moments filled with a holy presence in the midst of ordinary circumstances.

We try to find words to describe those moments; sublime… transcendent… out of this world. They are simple moments, ordinary, unique, fascinating…it is what it is and it is so much more. The ancient Jewish had a way to interpret those moments, a way of trying to say what those experiences meant, when we became aware of the something else that points us to a greater reality that has always been there but that suddenly becomes more real. They believed that everything that you and I experience is the result of the explosive, expansive, creating energy that surges through all things, that holds everything together and that gives creation its life, its depth, its fullness, its significance. They call this power, divine energy, the ruach of God.

They believed that God’s ruach flows, and the whole earth is infused with it according to the Psalms. That when we talk about life, we are talking about the vitality and creativity, stars and rocks, whales and dolphins and babies and sacred moments that have a singular, common, creative, sustaining, eternal source that is God- who sustains it all. And that includes us!

The interesting thing about this ruach is that it is powerful enough to fuel and animate everything in this wide and strange universe, but at the same time it is as intimate and personal as the breath you and I just took, as close as the next breath you are about to take. In the words of Job, “As long as I have life within me, the ruach of God in my nostrils…”  One of the most common translations of ruach is in fact, breath.  The writer of Ecclesiastes uses the same word to describe how each one of us is the recipient of this energy, this divine breath given to us by our Creator to sustain us, to fill us, to inspire us- to make us alive. So even before we are able to do anything, to accomplish anything… before we are able to say anything, to create anything we have been given a gift. A gift that is closer to us than our own breath and more real than anything I can touch or feel or experience. More real than life.

The psalmist expresses this idea in poetry when he proclaims in Psalm 139: “Where can I go from your spirit, where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there…” So what was the answer that I’ve found to the question “where is God” that has sustained me through my times of chaos, that has given me strength to take the next step, that has given me energy to continue to explore all the other questions that come out of this simple yet extravagant answer?

God is with us.

I live with the awareness that God is with us, around us, beside us, present with us in every single moment- and that answer becomes a journey, an adventure, an art form, a challenge: to maintain that awareness in the face of all the distractions, temptations, misconceptions that are around me. To be fully present at each of my encounters, at each new experience, at each ordinary experience, to that I don’t miss out on the significance of those encounters, so I don’t rush through this life without taking the time to explore the depth of the presence of God around me in every human being and in every part of this creation- even in those places and in those people where his presence is hard to find, hard to identity, due to the consequences of the brokenness in our world, knowing that it all will one day be redeemed.

So let me finish with three points for you to consider out of this beautiful reality that our God isn’t distant, unaware or indifferent to our reality, but that God is with us:

God is with us and that should show me that my life is significant. Any other thought or temptation to diminish my importance should finish at the moment that I realize that the creator of the Universe is forever committed to love me! God is with every one of us and that should show me that we are all connected- so I refuse to be indifferent, unaware or distant from you. Your life is significant and therefore your experience is significant for me. God is with us, so hope is real, regardless of how faint or repressed it may look at times. Hope is real, things are headed somewhere and that the one in control is good. You may even say that he is for us… but that would be the topic of our next sermon! Ultimately, living with the awareness that God is with us should inspire me to drink deeply from every experience, every encounter, so that I don’t miss out on his gift of life. God is with you! Let’s life a life inviting people to this beautiful reality, this gift available to all of us!