Always in the Presence of God

A couple weeks ago I ran across the following line:

"The presence of God is infinite, everywhere, always, and forever. You cannot not be in the presence of God. There’s no other place to be."

It was written by Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and author of a number of books, including Falling Upward which I read a couple years ago.
   In the context of his meditation, he is writing about the importance of being aware of your current place and situation, about being "in the moment". When you are fully aware of this, you become aware not merely of the present, but of the Presence of God in your life as well.
   As I pondered that idea a little, I came to think that there is another way to think about this infinite, everywhere, always, and forever presence of God. Non-Christian scientists try to suggest that science, by which they mean nature, demonstrates that God exists. Science cannot prove the existence of God, and nature provides no clear evidence for God.
   Scripture gives us a different picture of the place of God in creation. Consider the following.

"...the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."  (Gen. 1:2b, NIV)

"The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge."

                                                      (Psalm 19:1-2, NIV)

"For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." (Rom. 1:18, NIV)

"The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." (Col. 1:15-17, NIV)

While it would take pages to interpret these passages fully, what this sampling of scripture shows is that God, as the Trinity, is intimately involved with his creation: infinite, everywhere, always, and forever. A technical term that describes this relationship is immanence.
   It is this idea that spoke to me through Rohr's quote. Creation speaks to God's presence, declaring his glory, showing his eternal power and divinity, because God hovers over his creation and in Christ holds all things together. What this means, as Rohr points out, is that one is always in God's presence, and because of the constant presence, we can become so accustomed to it that we fail to recognize it.
   Consider the air around us. We can't see it, and unless it is moving (or we are moving fast enough) we can't feel it. I teach my students that air exerts a pressure of about 14 pounds per square inch over every square inch of our body.  You should notice that amount of pressure if you think for a moment what a 14 pound weight feels like-that's about the size of a bowling ball. For the vast majority of the time, we are not conscious of the air around us because it is there all the time, everywhere we go. We actually have never known anything different than this air pressure around us.
   It's this very idea that God's presence is so constant, everywhere, always, that leads to the idea that it is so easy to forget. And for the unregenerate heart, easy to reject, even if the presence of God is clearly visible.
   For the Christian, one in whom the Spirit has worked to open their eyes, the presence of God is visible. And for the scientist who is a Christian, God's presence is clearly visible in the creation that is the object of scientific study.
   On the one hand, I have known this for years. This is nothing new. But sometimes, at Rohr suggests, we lose site of our place, in this case our place in creation, and we need a reminder.
   It's good to be reminded of a basic truth once in a while.

Chemistree

Chemistree

What is this thing?  For the past several years I have put this thing out somewhere in the chemistry department during the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Except for the lights, everything on it is made of chemistry lab equipment: a ring stand, rings, clamps, and various flasks filled with colored water.  (It's just food coloring; not exotic, toxic, and expensive to dispose of heavy metals.)

It's a Chemistree.

I saw one of these on Facebook several years ago and decided I needed to make one, too.  It's not hard to do, and even fun to set up and show off.  This year it even got a shout out on Facebook from a colleague.

But why?  

The obvious answer is that it is a play on one of our main Christmas traditions, the Christmas tree.  The frame are the branches, the flasks are the ornaments, and the ring of lights on the top is a star.  All it needs are a some presents underneath.  (Bottles of chemicals the students needs for their senior research projects, perhaps?)

But why not just put up a Christmas tree, then?  Because the Christmas tree is a symbol.  It points us to something else.  First and foremost, it is a symbol of the coming of Jesus Christ.  It helps us to remember the incarnation, the entering of God into the world.  Not because we deserve it, but because without his coming, death, and resurrection, we could not be reconciled to him.  

Switching to more personal reasons, I like Christmas trees because of the lights.  Winter is dark; the days are short and the nights are long, so the lights on the tree help to brighten my days and cheer me up.  As a result, we tend to leave our tree up longer than many--there's as much darkness in the months following Christmas as there is before.  Our family tree gets covered with ornaments that have been collected for years and years.  Each year everyone in the family gets a new one.  So that tree is covered with memories: stuffed animals, Veggietales characters, gold and silver stars, antique ornaments from our parents homes, and fine blown glass.  But all these decorations still point us back to the Christ child, gifts to each other to remind us of God's gift to us.  The tree is about Jesus, but it is for us.  It is good when we take this symbol and make it our own--tying our lives to the life of our Savior.  

The Chemistree serves a similar purpose.  We make it from the things in the lab.  We make it from the tools that we chemists use to probe and study the creation.  The creation that was created in and by the babe whose birth we remember at this time of the year.  Thus, using the equipment that helps us steward God's creation, we celebrate his coming to redeem us.

And so we come to the reason for the Chemistree.  Jesus comes to redeem his people, and he comes to reconcile all things, even the atoms and molecules that these tools enable us to manipulate.

Soli Deo Gloria