God Shows Up in Different Ways

About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’
“‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked.

‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ - Acts 22:6-8

Do you notice how Jesus shows up in this passage? Jesus does not give in to a binary, but rather shows up in BOTH transcendent and immanent ways.

What launches this episode is the huge fireworks display. Jesus shows up as a blinding light - heavenly, totally other, dramatic, miraculous.

But that’s not all. We also see Jesus showing up by saying that he is so closely identified with the church that Saul is oppressing that Saul is also oppressing Jesus as he oppresses the church. Jesus is that aligned with those who are suffering. Jesus is showing up as humble, human, suffering, oppressed, and very present.

Although we tend to love it when God shows up in miraculous ways, it’s more common for God to show up in the ordinary parts of our lives and in the marginalized parts of our world. As one author put it:

There is simply a numbing quality to the everyday ordinary – the chug, chug, chug of day after day, task after task, routine after routine. Spiritual highs happen along from time to time, but they quickly disappear into that bottomless pit we call the past. One of the problems with great worship experiences and other encounters with God is that you don’t die right after they’re over. You have to go to the parking lot. - Daniel Taylor, The Skeptical Believer

Where are you meeting God these days? Take a moment and reflect on the ordinariness of your life - could God be in that somewhere? And how about considering where you’ve seen God showing up amongst the oppressed? Finally, when is the last time you’ve seen God show up in fireworks, in the big breakthrough, in the miraculous?