written by Rev Gary Heard

If someone were to ask you where to go if you wanted to find God, many would respond that you should go to a religious place where people hang out, or spend time in prayer, or read the Bible.  If you had been in Jerusalem 2000 years ago and asked the same question, the answer would have been to go to a hill outside the city gate, and look for a cross upon which hung a man.  You would know which was the correct one by the sign above his head reading "King of the Jews".  There you would find God.  A strange place indeed!

And yet we continue to find God in such strange places.  In the middle of a crisis many people discover God's peace and presence for the first time.  God breaks into our consciousness at unexpected times, bringing a word of challenge, a word of hope, or of consolation.  For many, the most significant experiences of God come at the most unexpected times - they find God in the strange places of life.

This seems surprising.  Of course, we still do find God in church, in the reading of His word, in prayer, but the Easter story tells us again to look for God in the unexpected places - even at the points where we feel the greatest sense of abandonment!  The cross of Jesus Christ is God reaching out to us in the depth of human existence in order that we might be able to know Him in every circumstance of life.  God continues to come to us today in the same unexpected ways, calling for us to respond.

April 11, 1993