Keep Him Real

"Start this year with a journal that collects your faith stories. Look
back on your pictures and search for God's fingerprints. Write down
what God reveals. There is more hidden in the past than you remember.

Listen for your story in silence ... even in the boring stuff.

Close your mouth. Open your eyes. Silence is the prerequisite to
imagination. We must be present and observant to the world around us,
the world within us, and the movements of God in both. See beyond your
vision." Ron Rose from a Heartlight Magazine article 01-06-12

I share this because I have found it to be so true! In the most mundane, ordinary, and unexpected ways and through the most mundane, ordinary, and unexpected sources God has given me little messages, stories... spice for life!  I once watched an episode of The Andy Griffith Show; "Opie weaves the fabulous tale of Mr. McBeevee, a man who walks in the treetops, wears a silver hat, has twelve extra hands, blows smoke from his ears, and jingles when he walks as if he had rings on his fingers and bells on his toes. But other than those few quirks, Mr. McBeevee is normal. Andy and Barney laugh it off, but when Opie brings back a quarter he claims was given to him by his friend, Andy is forced to call the stories to a halt. Faced with the threat of a spanking, Opie is still unable to betray the existence of Mr. McBeevee. Andy may have to accept the unacceptable in the face of Opie's insistence. Later, when out for a walk, Andy happens past the very same tree Mr. McBeevee, a telephone linesman, is working in. Andy gets his own introduction to the man who walks in the trees and Opie is vindicated."

As I watched this episode, I was struck by how we are sometimes confronted by a new aspect of God we have not experienced but hear of someone else's experience.  I realized how often it was much like Opie describing Mr. McBeevee to his Pa - it seems too far out there to be real or true.  Like Opie, the one relating his or her experience has to deal with our skepticism or blatant disbelief.  
Now, granted, Opie's experience was his lack of experience in being able to clearly relate to his Pa who he had encountered.  And while I do believe that God's Word reveals to us what we need to know about God - even in His Word, we can often go back and see something we never recognized before!  
For instance, I have shared my D-Day experience and how I needed God to be real, present, today, now... immediate!  Prior to that day, I had been taught about God in the past!  It is an amazing history to be sure!  I had been taught about the promises of God for our future, after this life.  But I could not accept that there was nothing for  us here, today other than what I could find printed on paper, bound in a book.  I needed Him to come off the page and into my heart... to step down from my intellect and bring my spirit alive!  Though it went against all I had been taught up to that point, I desperately needed Him tangible and immediate!  That was nearly 16 years ago.  I still discover something new about God - new to me - in His Word!  But more than that, I hear Him now, see Him, feel Him, experience Him in ways I had been taught were not possible for us today; such as in an episode of The Andy Griffith Show.  Such as in watching the clouds overhead and various scriptures immediately come to mind - to me, that's nothing short of a touch, a caress, an affirmation from The Father!  One day, when suffering from severe congestion, I was listening to Pandora and heard a song that I decided I needed to check for the name and artist and saw that it was performed by "Needtobreathe"!  Coincidence?  I prefer to believe that it was a little humor from The Father!  It gave me a chuckle!
I do believe you can find, hear, see, feel The Father every day... in the little things, in the ordinary ways, through mundane sources if you tune your heart to Him.  Discover where He has been hiding in plain sight in your life, seeking Him every day in every way - you'll be surprised where and how you discover Him!  If ever the expression "Keep it Real" applied to anything, it applies to this with a little tweak, "Keep Him Real"!