The God In Me, Sees The God In You

While preparing for Sunday's sermon, I sought quotes about God to illustrate a point. Because of the time constraints of Sunday morning, I didn't use all the ones I wanted to, so I saved a few of them because they were so good. 

The following quote really resonated with me, and I thought I would share and reflect on it for today's Devo: 

The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in [them] - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.     - Swami Vivekananda

This reminded me of the famous mystical revelation that Thomas Merton had in Louisville, KY, while he was running errands for his monastery.  He wrote: 

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… 

Both quotes reveal that realizing God's image in the people around us transforms everything we thought we knew about God and God's relationship with humankind. 

My question (and maybe yours) is, "How do I figure this out?"  

Most of us tend to see our differences with others far more than what we have in common. This makes it all the more difficult to see other people as connected to us and bearing the image of God.  

Further, we live in a culture where we are urged to highlight our uniqueness, which makes us stand apart from everyone. This is alright, but prioritizing that uniqueness over our connectedness to others can harm our relationships.

The truth is, most of us will never experience a mystical revelation at the intersection of a busy city.  But we can discover the sacred nature of being connected to the people around us and recognize the God-image within them without much effort.

This can become a reality when we practice the dignity of notice with the people we encounter daily. 

Practically, this means paying attention to those around us, seeing them, empathizing with them, reaching out to speak words of encouragement, practicing hospitality, and acting with gentleness and kindness.  

It means doing our best to find connections with other people, even those who seem like they might be completely different from us. These connections can only happen when we choose to see them as children of God, connected to us through the God-DNA in all of us.  

When we discover the common ground we share, it's so much easier to see the light in other people that we desire to be evident in us.  

May we learn to see those around us as God-temples, worthy of notice, worthy of our kindness, worthy of being connected to however we find a connection?  And in so doing, we may find that we are set free to be the people God longs for us to be. 

And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us now and always. Amen.