EXPERIENCING THE PRESENCE OF GOD
God can be seen everywhere in His creation. Therefore, we need to acquire the eyes to see God in His creation. Then we will be able to feel the presence of God at every moment.
Among the three people who travelled on the spacecraft Apollo-15 to the moon in 1972 was a man called Col. James Irwin. In an interview, he said that setting foot on the moon was an outstanding experience. He felt God’s presence on the moon, he said. He was ecstatic, sensing something deep inside his soul. He felt God very close to Him. He could see God’s glory with his own eyes, he said. For him, he explained, that trip to the moon was not just a scientific expedition. It also blessed him with a spiritual life.
Col. Irwin’s experience was by no means an unusual one. The fact is that all that God has made is so utterly amazing that one is awe-struck on seeing His creation and thinking how great the Creator of all of this must be. The face of God appears every moment in the perfection of His creation. But we have become so used to seeing the world around us, from our infancy onwards, that we do not feel its uniqueness. The air, the water, the trees and the birds, everything that exists in the world—all of these are incredibly astounding. Every one of these creations is a mirror of the Creator. Because we have become so used to them that we do not realise how amazing they are. But when someone suddenly steps on the moon and beholds this creation of God for the first time, he cannot remain without feeling the ‘presence of God’. He sees the Creator reflected in the workings of His creation.
We can experience God’s presence in the world where we live in the same way as Col. Irwin did when he landed on the moon. But people do not see this world in the same awe-struck way as someone who steps on the moon for the first time sees it. If we begin to see our world in this way, we will experience the ‘presence of God’ at every moment. We will begin to live as if we are in the neighbourhood of God and that He is present before our eyes at every moment.
If we see a high-quality machine for the first time, we immediately feel the presence of an expert engineer there. In the same way, if we can see deep into the world and whatever it contains, we will find the ‘presence of God’ at that very moment. The Creator will appear to us in such a way that we will not be able to separate the Creator from the creation.
The most outstanding achievement for someone in this world is to begin seeing God, to feel the presence of God near him. If he is indeed alive, he will see God’s light in the sun’s brilliant rays. He will discern reflections of God in the verdant trees. He will experience the touch of God in the softness of the breeze. Then, while prostrating and touching his palms and forehead on the ground, he will experience surrendering his entire existence at the feet of His Lord.
God can be seen everywhere in His creation. Therefore, we need to acquire the eyes to see God in His creation. Then we will be able to feel the presence of God at every moment.
