Debbie was sure she was right. There was no God. And if we cared to take Debbie’s challenge she could prove it. With that she laid money on the table and said if anyone could prove her wrong she’d give them the contents of her red purse.
“Who’s in?” She quickly turned to put money on the table, with her brown hair swinging behind her.
We all agreed to take Debbie’s challenge.
“There’s just one thing,” she explained. “You have to pray and ask God for something. It doesn’t matter what it is. Just something, and don’t tell anyone what you’re going to ask for. Tomorrow we’ll see if anyone got anything, and you’ll see there is no God.”
That night my mind was blank. What should I ask God for? Since this was a big prayer, I decided I better get on bended knee because, after all, I was going to prove to Debbie she was wrong, that God is real. My mind was blank. What should I ask for?
Maybe God would give me a Mercedes. No, human hands made that. Maybe God could give me a lot of money. No, Debbie would only say my father did that. It had to be something only God is capable of. Finally after sitting there for a long time I asked God to reveal himself through nature’s beauty, and finally settled on four leaf clovers.
The next day we told Debbie our prayers. We had 24 hours to see them come true she said. That day during recess while sitting on the ground, my hand reached behind me and touched clovers. Turning around to look, there were three four leaf clovers. I excitedly picked them and saved them for Debbie.
Running up to Debbie, I said, “Look, clovers! I knew it, God is real.”
“That was too easy,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You can find clovers anywhere. If I looked for them I could find them too, and I didn’t pray for them at all.” But she didn’t find any.
It’s been many years since that grade school challenge, and the world is full of those still questioning God’s existence. Somehow we expect God to work at it to show his existence, to prove to us he is real, and beg us for our adoration. We expect a mighty, unmistakable revelation – lightning to separate the sky, something ground-shaking. We expect angels, some big problem to be solved, or God to carry us to higher ground. We expect something tangible; something we can touch. And yet, that isn’t the nature of God.
God will never force us to believe, but when we learn to look past our fear, skepticism, and need for proof, we find God in rainbows, waterfalls, and gentle whispers. Debbie chose to believe that God did not exist at all because she had asked him for something material that she did not receive. Her vision of God was superficial. She had limited God to the physical world, and thereby failed to experience God’s limitless spiritual presence. Because she had expected to find something of a genie, who was there to take care of her physical desires for more, to grant her material wishes, and feed her greed, she failed to see that God is the creator of life, and exists in the small, beautiful, subtly transforming things.
Unlike what we sometimes try to make of him, God is in the intellectually perplexing things that lead us to spiritual awareness. He is in the things that allow us to think of his goodness and his resounding nature. As elusive as the nature of God can sometimes seem to us, he expects us to just believe he exists, and that he is there to help us.
And yet, when going through problems, difficulties, or just feeling exasperated, we want to know God is real, and we are offended when he doesn’t prove himself. We tend to focus on the problem, the circumstance, instead of believing the answer is on the way. We tend to do just what Elijah did in Kings 2 when we are asked to trust and believe. When we are under life’s pressures it gets harder and harder to believe, and trust.
Even prophets like Elijah did not always understand the nature of God. Elijah was a man that had been given great spiritual gifts and was also taken to heaven without dying, yet when God asked Elijah to see beyond the physical and just believe he was going to come through for him, Elijah ran instead. And he continued to run. He ran for 40 days in the desert until finally taking some rest. As he was resting the spirit of God came to him.
“What are you doing here Elijah?”
Elijah explained he was afraid, that all the prophets had been killed and he was the only one left. And now they wanted to kill him too. In his fear he tried to handle his own life and failed to believe God could come through. He needed a physical solution.
“Go stand at the mouth of the cave, I am going to pass by,” God told Elijah.
As Elijah approached there was a powerful thunderstorm, strong enough to break apart the cave. But God was not in the thunderstorm. One can only imagine Elijah, already exasperated and tired, witnessing such a fearful display of nature. If things weren’t bad enough, rocks began tumbling down in the cave he was staying in. It’s hard to imagine Elijah not asking himself, “God, where are you?”
Then came a fire that followed the storm. But God was not in the fire either. And just when Elijah thought things couldn’t get any worse, a great windstorm arose. Elijah must have thought, surely God is in the wind. But God was not in the wind either.
Next, after the thunder and lightning, and the fire and wind, there was a light breeze. In the breeze came a comforting whisper. Finally Elijah heard God say in the gentle breeze, “Why are you afraid?”
God had shown Elijah that he is always there to protect him, that he is bigger than our problems or our fears. What God was really asking when he asked Elijah “why are you afraid,” was why are you looking for me in only the physical things? Haven’t I always been there for you?
God was not in the physical displays of the natural elements, he was in the calming breeze, the healing whisper. God allowed Elijah to see that God is a powerful force in his life whose nature is often much more subtle, gentle and healing than we could imagine. He is bigger than any storm.
God’s answers often come in the small, untouched things, like the childhood four leaf clovers. God’s promises are displayed in rainbows, waterfalls, multi-colored sunsets. All things unnoticed if we aren’t listening or expecting his voice. God is in the quiet breeze. He is in the calm after the storm. He is in the gentle whispers.
You might also be interested in “Is God Real?” by Dr. Bobby Harrington.