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When I was young, I lived in Switzerland for a year with my family. If you followed the road we lived on up the hill, you would come to a large field along one side. The villagers who lived in that area told us that, on a clear day, there was a magnificent view of Mount Blanc across this field. Mount Blanc was the highest of the Swiss Alps, but try as we might, we couldn't catch a glimpse of it. Every time we drove up there, the mist hung low and the clouds were heavy, and all we saw was an empty field. After a while we stopped journeying that way, thinking that perhaps the view was overrated, an exaggeration meant to trick naïve Americans into renting houses close by.
But then one day early in the morning, we traveled up that hill again. This time the mists were gone—and there the mountain stood. A great jagged peak was soaring up to the sky, flashing reds and pinks from the rising sun. It was glorious, and we marveled. We made many more travels to that field after that, and most of the time the view was obstructed by mist. But we had seen that alpine giant once and the vision stayed with us. Occasionally it greeted us again with grandeur, but even when we couldn't see it, we knew it was there.
Many people have had an experience of God's presence, and they know he is there. Sometimes they are estranged from him for a long time, but they come back to him—they come back because they remember. They remember when the mist lifted, when they knew Jesus was real, when the reality of his presence was so magnificent that it stuck.
One man shared with me that he'd had a grandmother who rocked him to sleep at night, singing "Jesus Loves Me," when he was three years old. He had become a successful man, competent in every way the world deems important. Yet he remembered his grandmother singing to him in the cauldron of an argumentative, atheistic home with parents who told him God was a crutch. "I felt God's presence," he said. "As she sang, I was aware that there was something more than this life." This experience eventually brought him back to church in his 40's, with his own children in tow.
When God's presence enters our meager four-score-and-ten existence, as we hack it out by the sweat of our brow, it is something we remember for the rest of our days. It resonates with the deepest part of who we are, because it is what we were created for. It chimes out, "The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world" (1 John 4:4). It is a vital reference point in our spiritual walk, and it keeps refreshing us and bringing us new life. This gracious intrusion into the way we think, the way we live, the way we create our world pulls us out of our distorted thinking and brings new life to the way we describe God.
I get criticized for being a grace fanatic. I get pinned to the wall at times by those who think I spend too much time talking about the love of God. I can't help it. It's all I know. I was rescued from hell on earth, from atheism, from suicide, by this Eternal Lover, and to not talk about it would be disastrous. To go back to being motivated by fear, by works, by climbing a ladder to try to please God with my filthy-rags righteousness would be a slap in the face to the One who calls me to live from a place of gratitude, forgiveness and adoration of Jesus.
