This Wednesday: Modern Worship Collective @ 6:30 pm

Dear Friends,

Did you find God or did God find you? So much of the language of modern faith is based on the idea that we are on spiritual journeys as the primary seekers of God and spiritual meaning, connection, and transcendence. I confess that I often use that language myself and of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. But what if faith happens in reverse? That it is God who is the one actively searching and seeking for us as humanity.

I hope you’ll join me in exploring the idea that God doesn’t just love us, but God really wants to be with us. I mean that God really wants to be with us and that’s how we ought to read the Bible and think about our relationship with God and our relationships with each other.

Faithfully,

Rich

Please join us immediately following the Sunday service for our Coffee Hour

(in-person in Trinity Court or online via Zoom).

bit.ly/SVPCCoffeeHour

Theme for Sunday

God follows me everywhere— 

Spins a net of glances around me, 

Warms my sightless back like the sun.

God follows me like a forest everywhere. 

My lips, filled with wonder, are fully numb, dumb 

Like a child who blunders upon an ancient holy place.

God follows me like a shiver everywhere. 

The desire in me is for rest; the demand within me is: Rise up,

See how prophetic visions lie neglected in the streets!

I wander with my reveries as with a secret

In a long corridor through the world— 

And sometimes I see, high above me, the faceless face of God.

[God follows me in tramways, in cafés.

And it is only with the backs of one’s eyes that one can see 

How secrets ripen, how visions come to be.]

Got Geyt Mir Nokh Umetum (God Follows Me Everywhere) by Abraham Joshua Heschel

• In what ways have you been on a spiritual journey searching for God? Where have you found God? How have you found God? When you think of your faith journey/story, who is the seeker? Are you the seeker on a quest to find God and spiritual meaning and connection? Or is God the seeker?

• Now think of God as the seeker on a journey searching for you and us. Where has God found you/us? How did God find you?

• What difference does it make to you to think of God as searching for us instead of the other way around?

A Selected Reading from Genesis 2 & 3

Common English Bible 

The Lord God took the human and settled him in the garden of Eden to farm it and to take care of it. Then the Lord God said, “It’s not good that the human is alone. I will make him a helper that is perfect for him.” So the Lord God formed from the fertile land all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky and brought them to the human to see what he would name them. The human gave each living being its name. The human named all the livestock, all the birds in the sky, and all the wild animals. But a helper perfect for him was nowhere to be found. So the Lord God put the human into a deep and heavy sleep, and took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh over it. With the rib taken from the human, the Lord God fashioned a woman and brought her to the human being. Then the woman took some of the fruit from the forbidden tree and ate it, and also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then they both saw clearly and knew that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made garments for themselves. During that day’s cool evening breeze, they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden; and the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God in the middle of the garden’s trees. The Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”