The first thing on my morning ritual is to brew a half a pot of coffee for my wife and I. I usually get up when it is still dark and make my way down the stairs in the darkness and turn on a light in the kitchen. But this morning when the light came on, the glass coffee carafe was not sitting on the coffeemaker. So I looked on the counter, the kitchen island, the kitchen table. No coffee pot. So I started looking in some other likely locations where I have found the coffee pot before: in the dishwasher, in the refrigerator, on the hutch. Nothing. I was a bit perplexed, so I started thinking of other places to look.
I remembered that yesterday morning I had done something unusual. I had taken the coffee pot to my wife’s bedside to refill her cup. Yes, I thought, it must still be in the bedroom. I quietly sneaked into the dark bedroom with my flashlight and swept it across the bedside table and the rest of the room while my wife slept. No coffee carafe. So I went back downstairs and began a more thorough search, looking on the dining room table, the sideboard, the family room coffee table (of course!). Nothing!
Now I was flummoxed. I began to look in some unlikely places: on top of the refrigerator, in the oven, in the microwave, in the foyer, then the laundry room and the bathroom. Hmmmff! I looked on the back porch, the front porch, the sewing room, all the bedrooms. I went back to the master bedroom not once more, but twice more, the last place I was sure I had seen it, searching on the floor, sweeping the whole room with the brilliant white LED light from my smartphone, no longer concerned about waking up my wife—she might know where the darned pot is! But she continued to snore lightly.
Finally, I gave up, and made a single cup of coffee by boiling water and pouring it over a filter containing ground coffee. I decided to continue with my morning routine, so I sat down with my cup of coffee and recited some of my favorite psalms and then sat for 20 minutes in Centering Prayer. After letting my frustration go and resting in God, surely I’ll think of some place I didn’t look for the glass carafe. It will show up somewhere.
Each Sunday, our pastor asks us before leading us in prayer, “Where have you seen God in your life this past week?” How far do you look to find God in your life? How important is it to you to see where God has been making an appearance? Are you like I was with the missing coffee carafe? Intent on finding God, even if you have to look in some unusual places? Willing to persevere in the hunt for Him in order to get that jolt you need to start your day?
It’s pretty easy to give up looking if God doesn’t play a critical role in your life. Your response might be, “I didn’t see God in my routines this past week. I’ll just wait and see if He shows up next week.”
Where are you looking for God? Are you just looking in the usual places? In the worship service, in the sermon or the liturgy, in the anthem or scripture? Maybe in your neighbor’s newborn baby, that beautiful face, those tiny perfect fingers? Maybe in answered prayer, the doctor’s original diagnosis was in error, there’s nothing to be concerned about?
Do you tend to look for God only in church, in prayer, or in miracles—and stop there? Or do you look in some unlikely places? Is God showing up in your conversation with the grocery store clerk? Do you see God in the mushroom that appeared in your yard one morning? Do you see God in your remembrance of someone you haven’t thought about in years? Do you see God in the person speeding past you through the traffic light that just turned red?
Where you see God in your life depends on where you look and where you expect to see Him. I say a prayer most mornings that I learned from someone else. It goes like this: “Father, I offer to you this day all my prayers, my works, my joys, and my sufferings. Let me accept without question and respond lovingly to every situation of this day as truly sent by you.” Every situation!
God was present when I couldn’t find the coffee pot. I don’t believe that Gods orchestrates every element of our lived experience, but I think He is present in them, and He observes how we react in every situation. Do we respond lovingly? Do we respond like Christ? Do we consider how God might be using a particular situation in our day to draw you to Him, to teach you, to love you, to guide you? God used a missing coffee pot to get my attention, to get me to think about how much effort I put into finding that pot, and to consider how persistently and thoroughly I look for His presence and actions in my life.
I hope that you devote more time looking for and contemplating God’s presence in your life, and that you don’t stop at all the usual places, but that you begin to find Him in some pretty unusual places that open your eyes to the possibilities of His presence in everything. And how he may be using, not one situation, but any and all situations to mold you into His carefully crafted creation.
So what about the missing coffee carafe? I’m still looking for it…but it’s only 7:45 am, so I still have lots of situations in the day ahead, where God will certainly show me some new things. If only I expect to see Him.