Holly Johnson, Fireworks and Giant Cabbages!

In our kitchen, we have a fridge magnet that says, ‘I’VE FOUND JESUS! – HE WAS BEHIND THE SOFA THE WHOLE TIME!’ It’s a joke not everyone will appreciate, but beyond the gag, it reminds me that God is always closer than we think – in the ordinariness of life, mostly overlooked.

 I once set my congregation the task of drawing a picture of God in 2 minutes. Most people looked horrified, but the children dived in before I’d finished speaking. One child drew a grinning cat, another an intriguing genie popping out of a bottle with two faces, one male the other female. A grown-up made a picture of a dog with the words, ‘The only thing that got me through the suffering.’ Seven-year-old Daniel brilliantly handed me a blank sheet and said, ‘It’s air, Dave. God is air.’

 Daniel’s idea is close to mine. I think of God, not as a human-like figure in the heavens, far away, but like the atmosphere – an all-encompassing presence sustaining and animating all life, religious and non-religious. When an atheist friend told me, ‘I find the idea of “not-God” energising’, I replied, ‘But you see, I think your “not-God” is the same as what I call “God” – the life-giving Spirit at the heart of everything.

 Some of the people I admire most aren’t particularly religious. I recently visited Brian at the request of his son. He only had a few days left on this mortal coil but we had a magnificent conversation about life and death. He said he wasn’t religious, yet he embodied the very essence of religion. Despite a severe disability he had worked tirelessly for the good of others, and exuded compassion and a warm, gritty wisdom.

 I asked Brian what he had learned from his seventy-odd years. He told me two things I won’t forget: that love is what makes a person great, and that bad things will pass so just keep doing good. It was a short-lived friendship but one I treasure. 

Between Brian and our fridge magnet, I learn not to look for God or the meaning of life in some lofty spiritual experience or profound truth, but in the ordinariness of a life well-lived.

 Morning prayers behind the sofa from now on!