I don’t even know if they’re on anymore, but I remember when I was deep in the weeds of mothering littles there were some pretty interesting daytime television options. I’d flip through and see these “mediums” or “psychics” calling out a letter. “Does the letter “A” mean anything to you? Does anyone in this section know someone whose name starts with an A? Maybe a family member? I’m thinking, I know like fourteen people whose name starts with A. But, ok.

Of course someone knows an A person. They want to. They want for that person to be talking to them. They want to see who missed them and who is looking out for them. They’re looking for an answer.

Same with horoscopes. I know people who say that today just might be a bad/good day, and in all of self fulfilling prophecy glory, it sure enough turns out to be just that.

These people are looking for something. Seeing something that we’re not seeing. The better the answers, the harder they look. But, when the answers are a little off, or not what they want to hear, then they stop looking.

Have you ever wondered why some people see God in everything and some people have to squint really hard to see Him, and even then they sometimes can’t? I often wonder if it has to do with how we approach the way we are looking. The more I look for God, the more I find him. The more I seek him, the more I see him.

As we look into our divided society, as we see people rallying and boycotting and saying that God is missing from today’s culture, are we sure? Are we sure that God isn’t present in our public schools? Because I have a teenage boy who tells me plenty of stories about how God is working in the lives of his friends even through great conversation at the lunch table. Are we sure that God isn’t in the courtrooms or the parking lots or the shopping malls? I know that he is. I know this because I’ve prayed with others in all of those very places. You and I, we’ve asked him into those places. We’ve invited him to join us, to sit, to watch over, to judge, to bless, to guide, to admonish, to lead, to make himself known right there in all the places where others claim that he is not.

Could it be that we’ve stopped looking? Could it be that we’ve given up? That our prayers are circumstantial? We see bad, so God is absent. God is absent, so we give up. We stop seeing him, and so we stop looking. . . It’s an endless cycle, it seems.

I want to challenge you to look. Look for God in his creation. Look for him in the people around you. We are created in his image, you know. Look for him in the rain, in the sun, in the trees. Listen as he speaks about how he is working in the hearts of our youth. Listen to your kids as they tell you how he’s worked in their lives this very day. Watch for the person at the grocery store who needs encouragement and say something expecting that it will be God speaking through you.

Don’t dismiss his presence today. For one day try a new experiment. Just give me one day. Today, don’t look for all the places that you think he is not, but instead find all of the places where he is. Look for God, and I know that you will find him.