The cry from Exodus this Sunday, “Is the LORD among us or not?” echoes a deeper theme throughout Scripture: people struggling to believe God is present during hardship. The wilderness becomes a symbol of that tension between memory of God’s past acts and fear in the present moment. When life becomes hard, faith often turns into the question “Are You really here?”This narrative shows that God’s presence doesn’t disappear just because people doubt it.
Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes, “God’s presence inside us and in our world is rarely dramatic, overwhelming, sensational, impossible to ignore. God doesn’t work like that. Rather, God’s presence is something that lies quiet and seemingly helpless inside us. It rarely makes a huge splash.
We should know that from the very way God was born into our world. Jesus, as we know, was born into our world with no fanfare and no power, a baby lying helpless in the straw, another child among millions. Nothing spectacular to human eyes surrounded his birth. Then, during his ministry, he never performed miracles to prove his divinity, but only as acts of compassion or to reveal something about God. His ministry, like his birth, wasn’t an attempt to prove his divinity or prove God’s existence. It was intended rather to teach us what God is like and how God loves us unconditionally.
In essence, Jesus’ teaching about God’s presence in our lives makes clear that this presence is mostly quiet and under the surface, a plant growing silently as we sleep, yeast leavening dough in a manner hidden from our eyes, spring slowly turning a barren tree green, an insignificant mustard plant eventually surprising us with its growth, a man or woman forgiving an enemy. God works in ways that are seemingly hidden and can be ignored by our eyes. The God that Jesus incarnates is neither dramatic nor flashy.
Fredrick Buechner suggests that God is present inside us as a subterranean presence of grace. The grace of God is ‘beneath the surface; it’s not right there like the brass band announcing itself, but it comes, and it touches, and it strikes in ways that leave us free to either not even notice it or to draw back from it.’
God never tries to overwhelm us. More than anyone else, God respects our freedom. God lies everywhere, inside us and around us, almost unfelt, largely unnoticed, and easily ignored, a quiet, gentle nudge; but, if drawn upon, the ultimate stream of love and life.”
