“Everything in It’s Right Place”
I used to think I knew where to find God. He seemed to always be where I put Him last.
He was in Sunday school every Sunday morning. He was in “big church” right after. He was there most Sunday nights, too. He was around our dinner table when my father read from the blue Bible-story books. He was there when I prayed before meals. He was there most times I prayed elsewhere, too. He was there during my quiet times. He was at church on Wednesday nights. He was really there at summer camp. He loved church camp. I think He just liked summers better in general. Once school started back, the moments with Him were father spaced, it seems. I enjoyed finding Him. It felt like things were right. Even if they weren’t, it felt okay. I wanted more moments with Him. I heard there was a Bible study on Monday nights, so I went, and sure enough – He was there. I had an accountability group and we met on Tuesdays, and sure enough – He was there, too. I heard about another Bible study that met on Thursdays, so I went, and wouldn’t you know it, there He was. He began showing up in the songs we sang around 1983. It was called contemporary worship. It was great. He was always in these songs, so I would sing them whenever I wanted to fin Him, and sure enough – there He’s be. By the time I got to college I thought I has it all sorted out with everything in its place. Then tragedy came.
Tragedy always comes. If it hasn’t come for you, it will. Not the losing-your-homework kind or the having-to-flush-your-goldfish kind, but the kind that leaves you stripped. The kind that tears from you all the ideas about living you once believed untearable. Mine came my junior year of college, and it came in a phone call. It was my mom. She said, “David, something very terrible has happened.” The words that followed were bombs. As they came hurtling toward me through miles of telephone wire, my muscles turned liquid, and when she finished, I was left wilted on the floor, and God was not there. At least I could no longer find Him. And I had no idea where to begin looking again. The places I used to frequent, I no longer trusted. In seven minutes everything I had thought about everything was dramatically different.
College is hard enough without something detonating in the middle of it. It is a pivotal moment. Your values encounter other values in the classroom and textbooks. Your faith is on trial inside libraries and laboratories. In my philosophy classes we read Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle was not a Christian, but he sure sounded like one. This bugged me. Or was it that my Christianity sounded a lot like Aristotle? This possibility was even more troubling. And in literature, thanks to Derrida deconstruction theory was preventing us from deriving any intended meaning from a text, because apparently language itself was now unstable and arbitrary. In my theology classes we studied how the Scriptures had been assembled, and I was concerned that I had not been informed of this arbitral processes earlier in my formation of faith. Had it been hidden from me? Why had I always been given such neat answers for messy questions? Or was this the proper time for the hearing of such things? Perhaps by your junior year of college, after you have been a Christian for fourteen years, you are properly equipped to sort out things like this?
There was a lot of sorting out to be done concerning most things and where they were to be placed in this faith I carried or that was carrying me, and it was proving a daunting task. And then in the middle of this sorting, an explosion. I was covered in shrapnel, clotlessly bleeding. And when I had bled out, when there was nothing left, I found Him. And He was not where I thought He was. Not where I had put Him last.
He was in a Chick-fil-A sandwich.
I have loved Chick-fil-A my whole life. But when your world implodes, nothing tastes good. I was poking at the thing and a thought hit me that there is one part of the sandwich I don’t enjoy. There is about a quarter of the breast that consistently dissolves into a lesser grade of meat and soggy breading. I pulled the top bun off and tore the portion away that didn’t look appealing. There was a natural break in the meat. It was easily separated. I put the top back on and ate. It was the best chicken sandwich I had ever eaten. I wadded up the foil sandwich bag and smiled for the first time in a really long while.
It may not sound like a real breakthrough, but for me it was truly cathartic. In a small, decisive moment I was aware of what was good and took effort to peel away what wasn’t and in the process became re-enamored with the Giver of good. I remembered out beginnings, when that statement “It was good” [Genesis 1] was first uttered. I thought about how the bad was never intended. Things started to come to life. Blood that had slowed to a crawl began to find its way through my veins again.
The consequences of this discovery were huge. If He was in a sandwich, where else could He be found? Every moment was becoming holy. Nothing was nonspiritual. This was habitual praise – a perpetually sacred acknowledgement of the Giver of every good thing. A relentless embracing of good and a discarding of bad with an awareness of the one who in the beginning spoke those life-affirming words.
When good is found and we embrace it with abandon, we embrace the Giver of it. This book explores that journey. This book is written in hopes that you begin to find God everywhere. Yes, in church on Sunday at 9:00 am, but also in the seemingly mundane. In traffic on Tuesday at 5:15 pm. In a parent-teacher meeting. In the colors of a sunset. On the other side of a tragic phone call. Every second is an opportunity for praise. There is a choosing to be made. A choosing at each moment. This is the Praise Habit. Finding God moment by revolutionary moment, in the sacred and the mundane, in the valley and on the hill, in triumph and tragedy, and living praise erupting because of it. This is what we were made for.
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