Experiencing God Everywhere

IN JESUS God became human experience: ‘What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life – this life was revealed so that you also may have fellowship with us, as we are in union with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.’1 John 1:1-3.
When asked about the essence of his message, Jesus replied: ‘Come and see.’ – come for the day and experience the presence of my company. He washed people’s feet. He used the metaphor of weddings to explain the nature of union with God. His humanity was seen in that experience of having his own feet washed by Mary’s tears, dried by her hair and anointed with her ointment.
Before he could believe in the Resurrection, Thomas needed to touch the wounds of the risen Christ. Deep healing and true faith are often found within the experience of woundedness.
Knowledge alone, ideas and concepts do not change us profoundly. Experience does. ‘Some things can only be seen by eyes filled with tears.’ After it we see things differently. Our experience is true when we hold no filtering lens, no preconceived notions: we have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable in our openness to reality. ‘Do not be afraid.’ Luke 12.32
Authentic conversion is experienced bodily and emotionally. It was to make all our pain redemptive that divine love
became wounded flesh.
We experience the Holy Spirit in charity, joy, peace, patience , kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. And that list of St Paul’s is not meant to be exclusive: he includes elsewhere humility and forgiveness, ‘whatever is excellent, honourable and worthy of praise.’ Gal 5.22, Col 3.12, Phil 4. 8
God became flesh, the place of experience, richer or poorer, better or worse, in sickness or health. Faith is that attitude which empowers us to experience, in healing depth, all the hard and joyful and routine experiences that each day may bring.
God desired to become our bodies, our senses, our emotions in time and space, so that divine being could be experienced everywhere, by everyone.
People are looking for the meaning of life, for the experience of being fully alive. They are looking for eternity. And eternity is not just to do with the hereafter. Eternity is a quality. If we don’t get it where we are here and now we won’t get it anywhere. The experience of eternity right now in some degree is the function of life. Heaven is the completion of that experience.
We experience something of God’s presence in everything that happens to us. There is a divine whisper in every sound; even the sound of temptation.
Our future resurrection will reveal that we have been experiencing it all our lives. ‘Heaven will be recognised as a country we have already entered, and in whose light and warmth we have already lived:’