My dad told the same corny jokes repeatedly because he’s a dad and that’s a dad’s number one job. It’s a job I take very seriously. One of his favorites was, “I’m a fisherman, not a ‘catcher-man.’” He would giggle, I would roll my eyes. Standard dad-kid protocol. But he was right. I’ve fished my entire life, but can’t count the number of hours I’ve spent casting lines in and out without catching a single fish. I swear, sometimes I can hear the fish laughing at me. It’s a humbling hobby, so why do I do it?
Of course there’s the nature and being near a body of water. Sometimes, I’m with good friends. But this is the best way I can explain why I waste time with this hobby: I get lost in it.
I throw the line out and reel it back in. Out and back in. Over and over. It becomes a kind of meditation. Anxieties and worries fade as I lose myself in the repetitive motion.
You’ve got these things, right? Activities that when you perform them, you get lost and you say things like, “time slows down” or “I feel alive” or “I’m just myself.”
Flowers are the thing for my wife. She was pruning and planting the other day in the warm January sun of California (it’s not worth the millions of dollars in rent, but it’s a perk.) You could see her deep presence and joy. She said to me, “I lose track of time” when working with flowers. She gets lost in it.
How Do I Connect With God?
As a pastor, I get one question a lot. “How do I connect with God?” People feel distant to God or don’t feel like they know enough about God or have grown tired of old spiritual routines—and they long to feel closer to the Divine.
I get it. I’ve spent my life trying different prayer routines, quiet times, rain dances, and seances. (Slight exaggeration.)
Although prayer practices are important and useful, the problem is we divide life into normal activities and spiritual activities. To spend time with God, I do special spiritual things separated from the rest of life. So most of us end up choosing the fun things over the spiritual activities.
But this is a false dichotomy. What if you don’t have to separate the normal and fun from the sacred and divine?
Where Does God Live?
Early in the Bible, we get an image of God being with humans in a garden. The garden was this unique place where heaven and earth collided.
But then, humans choose rebellion, God casts them out and things change. Years after the separation from the garden, God’s people build a tent, which eventually becomes a temple—a place to recreate what once existed in the garden.* God’s presence would uniquely reside in this temple.
The problem was this temple only existed for one tribe and only certain qualified people could enter the deepest, most intimate part of the temple.
But then, Jesus came along and one person who wrote about him talked of him in a way that pointed back to the garden and temple.** Later, Jesus talked about himself being the “temple,” which confused his followers.*** The truth they were trying to communicate was Jesus was the new temple, the new place that heaven and earth uniquely came together.
This would be good news if it stopped here, but things get even better. After Jesus ascended to heaven, he talks about leaving his spirit here and then, get this, we find out a powerful new reality—we are now the temple. Heaven and earth uniquely collide in us.****
Do you realize the implications of this? Everywhere we go and in every activity we do, we carry the spirit of God with us. Here is what this means:
- You don’t have to put on some nice clothes and drive to a local house of worship to connect with God.
- You don’t have to be ultra-religious.
- You don’t have to know everything about God or know a ton about theology.
- You don’t have to have worship music playing on your headphones.
- You don’t have to have everything figured out or be perfect or be a holy priest or be born into a special tribe.
You just have to learn to be a traveling communion-er.
Traveling Communion
When I say the word communion, I’m sure images pop up in your mind. For some, you think of passing little cups of Welch’s grape juice and stale crackers. Others, it’s a goblet of real wine and bread. (I grew up Baptist, so we didn’t get these privileges.)
But in Greek, the word communion is “Koinonia.” Koinonia means “fellowship and unity.” The simple solution to spending more time with God is to realize every activity can be a moment of unity and fellowship. A moment of communion.
When you first meet someone and begin a friendship, both parties try to fill the emptiness because it gets a little awkward. Some of us develop little tics or sounds when we can’t think of anything to say. We’ll say, “yup” or sigh or check our phone. The awkwardness can be painful.
But something glorious happens with certain people—you connect and bond and become comfortable with each other, so much that you cross an important marker. You can sit together and not say anything. And it’s not awkward, it’s sort of nice. Somehow, because you a bonded, you are still enjoying and sharing the moment collectively. You are filled with each other’s presence. You are unified simply by being near one another. You have entered a state of with-ness and a state of communion.
With practice and time, this can be our reality with God. We can enter a state of with-ness and communion—wherever we go. We can commune with him as we do the things we hate and the things we love.
You can fish and flower and work on cars and hike and take a drive and paint—and spend these moments with God. You don’t have to fill the space with mindless chatter. You can simply be aware of his presence.
So,
May you understand that the place you are standing or sitting is holy ground.
May work and hobbies and mundane tasks be transformed from menial secular activities to sacred moments of communion.
May you realize you are the temple of God. A place where heaven and earth collide.
May you live with a greater awareness of God’s presence.
And get lost in it.
Appendix A:
Like anything worth doing, this takes some practice and intentionality. We can’t go from a lifetime of being lost in anxious thoughts and worries to instantly being lost in the presence of God. It takes practice. I’ve got some thoughts on this and some tips and strategies to help. I’ll try to write about these soon.
Appendix B:
My buddy Nuree and I talked about this very topic in our podcast recently. Last year, we started recording some of our weird conversations about life and faith and art… you can listen HERE.
Appendix C:
*Exodus 25:8
**John 1:14
***John 2:19-21
****1 Corinthians 6:19-20
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