Sometimes I (and everyone else, I presume) find something interesting, a clipping or whatever, and slip it into a drawer to go back to, one day. This is from a newspaper clipping that I don't know the exact date of, but know that it definitely predates 1989, the death of the author, the Reverend Gaston Foote. It's called "Looking for God," and has a really good view point:
"Sir Julian Huxley, a distinguished scientist, told us 40 years ago that we were entering a new era in which God would be completely abandoned. I quote: 'Man must stop creeping for shelter to the arms of a father-figure whom he himself has created and stop trying to escape responsibility by sheltering under the umbrella of divine authority.'
Is this a day for the eclipse of God? In this connection may I suggest three things. First. we may be looking for the wrong kind of God. If the God we seek is the one who directs us against our wills, manipulates us as though we were puppets, pulls on our leash when we go in the wrong direction, we may not find that kind of God. God is not so much power, but person; not force, but Father.
In the second place, we may be looking for God in the wrong places. We often speak of tornadoes, floods and plane accidents as acts of God. Are they? Or simply the result of the laws of cause and effect?
We think of God as being in the unnatural, the unpredictable. Is He not more realistically in the natural and the predictable? I seem to find God in the laboratories where men work to eradicate disease, spot tornadoes, predict earthquakes and overcome floods.
Finally, we we often look for God in the wrong direction. He is not out there in space on cloud nine sending thunderbolts to frighten his children. God is not so much a noun or an object as he is a spirit of love, truth, understanding, respect, friendship.
I believe I had a glimpse of God on a recent weekend in a city park. A young couple had taken a group of underprivileged children out for a day's outing so they could become better acquainted with them, help them feel a sense of personal importance, let them know that they were, one by one, deeply loved by the creator of the universe. Have you not seen God lately?"
