Looking for God in all the wrong places?  Arthur Dyck, part of the church planting team at Holy Trinity Riverbend, shares with us an article originally written for the Riverbend Rag about looking for God in good of your life, community, and work.  So read on...

So this isn’t working so well.  I walked down to my favourite coffee shop this morning with the plan that I would write this article.  But when you’ve lived in a community for fourteen years and when you’ve not only lived in your community but also been involved in your community for that long, the chances of being able to work uninterrupted are pretty slim.  I actually knew that, but I figured that would be okay.  But today there are more interruptions than normal.

I shouldn’t call them interruptions, because I’m seeing people that I’ve known for years, people that I’ve known for a few months, and people that I’m meeting for the first time.  I’m enjoying every encounter because today the theme is constant:  good things are happening in people’s lives.  It might be new jobs, it might be new businesses, and it’s reflections about the Deep Freeze Festival that just finished on 118^th Avenue.  Everyone is excited.

This is good.  It’s also forming the basis for this article because I think one of the roles of the church is to look for God and then say, “Look, there he is.”

How do you look for God?  Well, you start with the presumption that God is always at work in the world.  There are a lot of theological bases for that presumption that are tied into the concept of the Kingdom of God that Jesus talked about, but I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about that.  I’m going to keep it really simple by saying that where good things are happening in your community, in your family, in your life, where you see people trying to make positive changes in the world, that’s where God is.  Why? Because those are the things that God wants to happen and he works to make them happen.

If you want to believe that, it requires a shift in thinking.  If you’re anything like me, you were always taught that God lives in that big house down at the corner that we call the church.  But that’s not entirely true.  It’s true that God is present there when there are people in the church worshiping and learning about God.  But as I’ve already intimated, God also lives and works in our communities and he also lives and works in the lives of people who can see that and see their mission as helping God do his work in the community.  It’s those people that make up the church.  That’s a whole different concept of what “church” is.  And for me, it’s very exciting because I can hear and see God in action, and I can then “translate” what God is doing for the people in my community.

So why don’t you try it?  Look at your own life to see how God is working.  Look at your community to see how God is working.  Look at your place of work to see how God is working.  He may not always be easy to see, but I’ll guarantee that he is there.  I know that’s a pretty bold statement to make, and during times of grief and pain he may be very difficult to see.  But I am convinced that he is there, especially after all my encounters this morning. 

If you would like to learn more about how to find God, why don’t you come and visit some Sunday morning at Holy Trinity Riverbend in Terwillegar Towne.  Our “Looking for God” begins at 10:00 a.m.  Sometimes where we meet can be harder to find than God, so go to our website at www.htrchurch.ca to get directions.

Arthur Dyck

Arthur is a member of the church planting team at Holy Trinity Riverbend.

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