What If We Missed God While Waiting for Him?

Every once in a while, something re-reminds me to be grateful, to sit up and pay attention. This time the reminder came from Ann Patchett’s book Run, a fiction.

One of the side characters, Father Sullivan, sat in an armchair toward the end of his life, looking out the window at the falling snow, pondering:

“How wrongheaded it seemed now to think that the thrill of heartbeat and breath were just a steppingstone to something greater. What could be greater than the armchair, the window, the snow?”

If we notice the gifts we’ve been given—I mean, really notice them—and we’re glad for those simplest of pleasures, this honors our Creator. Armchairs, windows, snow. The items we see and touch and hear and taste.

Back when losses were piling up—beginning with my husband’s job, the loss of financial cushion against retirement, the passing of my mother, and then of my husband—I eventually learned to count what still remained.

At the culmination of all the losses, I had kids, and grands, and in-laws who still included me on vacations, holidays, and events. There were girlfriends to meet over coffee, the aroma of pumpkin scones hot out of the oven, good health and energy to re-hike all the mountain trails my husband and I had hiked together, the thrill of heartbeat and breath, the joy of living at the foot of the Cascades in a beautiful land called central Oregon.

So much loss. And yet … so much remaining.

Back to Father Sullivan in his armchair by the window watching the snow swirl:

“[This] was a final, joyful realization of all he had been given. It would be possible to overlook just about anything if you were trained to constantly strain forward to see the power and the glory that was waiting up ahead. What a shame it would have been to miss God while waiting for Him.”

Yes, it’s good and well to look forward to the “blessed hope and the glorious return of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

But what if we could see all we’ve been given here and now? What if we could be present in the world today, and count the graces while we still have breath … instead of counting all that’s been taken from us?

What a shame it would be to miss God now, here on earth, and the simple pleasures and graces he gifts to us—while we’re waiting for him.