The God Hunt

The Unbearable Brightness of Seeing

June 1, 2011 by admin

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

After eye surgery early one Monday morning, I removed the plastic patch as instructed “at the dinner hour.” That right eye, which had been increasingly dimmed due to a cataract, was suddenly flooded with hyper-vision. The whites in the patterned carpet, the evening light on the trees in the backyard, the chandeliers over the dining-room table seemed shot with a neon luminescence. Nearsighted for my adult life, I suddenly could see distances in a way I had never seen them before. I felt like the blind men who had been healed by Christ: “I can see! I can see!” It was almost unbearable, this sudden brightness in seeing.

Two days after surgery, the x-ray effect faded due to my brain compensating for the enhanced sight, but perhaps this stunning sightedness was something akin to what the disciples saw during Christ’s transfiguration: “and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no fuller on earth could bleach them” (Mark 9:3). My ophthalmologist, a Christian man, who frequently hears comments on heightened vision from his many cataract patients, offered an analogy to the clear sight we must experience in heaven, an allusion C. S. Lewis also developed in his parable The Great Divorce.

This was the procedure: I went into a surgery center at 6:15 a.m. and walked out by 8:30 a.m. An anesthetic was administered in an IV drip, I was awake for the surgery, wheeled into the operating room, a small incision was made, the old cloudy lens was pounded with lasers, the broken pieces were suctioned out, and the tiny artificial lens was popped in—a painless procedure requiring no stitches. Without this surgical possibility, I would probably have been blind within the next year. How I thank God for His great gifts that come to us through the miracle of healing and science!

Now my “good” eye, the left eye, which was scheduled for surgery in six weeks, saw the world through a dirty yellow cloudy gauze, and I thought, Why did I put up with this dim sight for so long?

“Do the lenses in people’s eyes dim just naturally with age?” I asked during my post-op exam. “Is a cataract sort of an extreme form of this normal cloudiness?” When my doctor replied yes to both of my questions, I realized I had been given a great gift, the opportunity to view the world clearly because of the removal of this dimmed lens—better than I might have if a normal aging process had continued. Again, I give thanks for God’s good work in my life.

How frequently we get used to dingy spiritual sight. This is a horrifying thought to me. Am I accepting a viewing lens regarding God that is less than it can be? All my life I have been more nearsighted spiritually than farsighted, looking inward, listening, seeking the godly that is near. Perhaps this change in focus, this physical long vision will affect my spiritual sightedness in ways I can’t predict. At 67, I can use doses of that unbearable Light. I want to be filled with a longing for the unanticipated. I would like to see in my old age things beyond the vision of my younger years. How about you?

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Award-winning author Karen Mains continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags. This microfinance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. The are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Karen has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk and is the author of The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase & the Wonder of Being Found.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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From My Youth You Have Taught Me

May 31, 2011 by admin

At the border, on our way to meet some 17 people at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, we stopped at the customs booth between the U.S. and Canada. “Oh, oh,” I said to David. “We’ve picked the wrong line.” The car ahead of us was delayed for an unusually long time.

“Nationality?” questioned the Canadian customs official as I eased the car to the window. “We’re all U.S. citizens.” I could tell this was a man determined to be official; all my attempts at charm would be lost on him. “Destination?” For 30 years we had answered “the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford,” and usually, that was enough to ensure a minimal border pause.

“Whose child is in the back seat?” he demanded. “Our grandson,” I replied, thinking this man certainly could not refuse the charms of Landis Mains, a handsome 9-year-old. The next question, however, threw me. “Do you have a birth certificate?” For years we have been crossing this border with our own children, of all ages and sizes, and never needed to prove their parentage or nationality! I was dumbfounded.

Visions of being stalled endlessly flashed in my brain; then the scenario of trying to reach my son and daughter-in-law three time-zones away, seeing if they could find the original certificate, then hurry to a Kinko’s or drugstore and fax it to some hostile office along the border. A quick mortifying picture flashed in my brain, of 18 people arriving in Stratford, wondering where their hosts, David and Karen Mains, could possibly be.

Suddenly, a little voice spoke up from the back seat. “A birth certificate? I have a birth certificate.” This couldn’t possibly be true. Did Landis actually mean a birth certificate?

“Landis,” said his grandfather. “Do you have a birth certificate? Do you know where it is?” Landis scrambled into his bag in the back of the station wagon, unzipped a pocket, and whipped out the authenticating piece of paper. Hah! I thought, knowing by now that our adversary, the border-crossing guard, would have done anything to delay our journey. Hah! We have a birth certificate! The paper was passed through the window, examined and passed back.

We were waved through on the heels of the next half-second.

Talk about God Hunt Sightings! There were actually three in this little story. First, Landis’ parents had the presence of mind to copy a birth certificate for their son who would be flying as an unaccompanied minor from Tucson to Chicago. (Except he didn’t need it for his air flight; he needed it for the border.) Second, Landis actually remembered that he had a birth certificate. Third, he knew exactly where it was.

I spy God! Have you any children in your life? Teach them how to play the God Hunt, and then they will prove God to you. “O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I will still proclaim your wondrous deeds. So even to old age and grey hairs…” Psalm 71:17, 18.

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Karen has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk and is the author of The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase & the Wonder of Being Found.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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Cataracts and Magnifying Glasses

May 30, 2011 by admin

“So,” I said to the eye specialist who had just given a name to the murky glaze that had suddenly begun clouding the vision in my right eye. This hunky eye-doctor with the long ponytail had some obvious interest in football. Walls in his examining room were covered with pictures of NFL players. “So, tell me what I need to know about cataracts.”

At that he called a nurse, who plunked me down in front of a video so I could endure 20 minutes of watching a real cataract operation, and then read a dreadful list of all the things that could go wrong if I underwent such a treatment.

Obviously, I didn’t hasten back to his office in six months as instructed, and hey, why ask an ophthalmologist to explain the nature of your eye dysfunction—isn’t that what the Internet is all about?

“Vision Connection” clearly describes what a cataract is; defines the three different types of cataract conditions and their causes; outlines the symptoms; and states directly, “Cataracts are treated with surgery.” No out for me here! This Web site goes on to explain that there are two types of surgery: phacoemulsification, and extracapsular extraction. OK. That’s fine. At least I didn’t have to watch a 20-minute video and then drive home by myself (shaken) afterward.

In the meantime, I placed a VERY LARGE magnifying glass by my computer. This is to help me to see. This is to help me see clearly.

It occurs to me that this is what the God Hunt is all about. It is a spiritual practice that enlarges our vision at identifying God’s work in our everyday lives—a VERY LARGE magnifying glass, if you will allow me to stretch the metaphor. The God Hunt helps us to see clearly.

Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best thought, by day or by night.
Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.

By chance, is there a cataract clouding your spiritual vision? Something obscuring your sight? Have you put a magnifier in place to clarify your seeing? If you sight God, I would like to hear about it.

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Karen has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk and is the author of The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase & the Wonder of Being Found.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

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God at Every Turn

August 14, 2009 by admin

Three blogs ago, I remarked that when we learn to look for God and find Him in the circumstances of the everyday, we can become breathless with how frequently He extends His hands to us, pulling us close, and twirling us in the dance that is stepping with Him.

Four categories help us to find God in the everyday. These are:

Any obvious answer to prayer.
Any help to do God’s work in the world.
Any unexpected evidence of His care.
Any unusual linkage or timing.

What is the God Hunt? The God Hunt is anytime God intervenes in our everyday lives, and we recognize it to be Him.

For instance, when I was clearing out the Annex building across the street from our office on Main Place in preparation to sell it, I discovered that a vacant building shows all its flaws. I was dreading taking on the responsibility of hiring repairmen, painters and contacting a realtor—all time-consuming responsibilities I suspected might fall on my shoulders.

Driving from home toward our main office, I kept seeing a huge commercial “For Rent” sign posted on the street of one of the neighboring office buildings. How will anyone even see our little “For Sale” sign when we put it up? I thought.

Two days later, David received a phone call from someone interested in buying the Annex, which despite its need for repairs was a lovely Colonial-style brick building. “We haven’t even contacted a realtor!” I exclaimed. “The inside still needs cleaning! The outside has to be scrapped and painted! How did they find out it would be for sale?”

It seems the woman who called David had pulled into the parking lot of our neighbors with the HUGE “For Rent” sign. She thought that sign was posted on our property. She called the phone number, realized her mistake, but that neighbor told her he thought our building would be for sale and gave her our phone number. We showed it with all its flaws on a Monday afternoon, without a realtor and without an appraisal.

In short time, we reached an as-is agreement and sold a broom-cleaned, vacuumed empty building in need of repairs to Union Local XX. I had been mourning the loss of my office in the Annex, the downsizing of our staff, the closing of our radio studio, the loss of our living-room-like planning space. I was allowing all these impossible improbabilities (not to mention the weeks I had been sorting and clearing) to overwhelm me.

Without even a little, innocuous “For Sale” sign, the building had been sold. Through this odd set of circumstances, God said to me (in that inwardly persuasive sort of way He has), “You know, Karen, I can take care of this stuff you’ve been wasting your energy worrying about.”

Obvious answer to prayer; unusual linkage and timing; unexpected evidence of His care—it’s all there. “I spy!” “I spy God!” It is easy for us, humans with myopic vision, folks who would all too often rather drag their feet during trying circumstances than to lift them to life’s rhythms (all life’s rhythms—dirges as well as festival hymns) to miss even these big God-events, let alone the diminutive occasions.

Remember, if you seek for Him in the everyday, you may become breathless with how frequently He twirls you around.

“Seek me and you will find me if you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you.” Jeremiah 29:13.

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

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Quick-Stepping

August 13, 2009 by admin

Dennis Sherbeck was a temporary employee; he worked as our audio engineer and sound editor for our daily radio show, The Chapel of the Air, which broadcasted daily over 500 outlets nationally. Usually, the Sherbecks served as missionaries to Pakistan, and Dennis worked with us when home on furlough.

After I sat in my husband’s office one morning, I felt I had been neglectful in not getting better acquainted. He and his wife, Diane, recounted the Sunday morning when they had been leading worship in a church that was bombed by extremist followers of Islam. Six were killed that morning and many others injured. “Normally,” they explained, “we sit on the side where most of those who died sat, but this Sunday morning, since we were in charge of the service, we were sitting up front.”

Though even the recounting of this memory brought back intense feelings, which the whole family was still dealing with, the Sherbecks nevertheless added, “We had many remarkable God Hunt sightings.” The God Hunt is a spiritual game we taught to our own four children, then to thousands of radio listeners, and finally included in several of our 50-Day Spiritual Adventures, a church-wide spiritual growth event.

They told of the attack on the grade school their 11-year-old son attended, how the terrorists were delayed in their plans and arrived 15 minutes after the children had all been called back into class from recess on the playground. They told of the Pakistani Christian worker who hurried to escape but couldn’t climb over the high fence behind the school building. Suddenly, two men wearing long white robes came and said, “Let us help you.” One kneeled so the fleeing worker could stand on his back; the other boosted him over the barrier. When he turned to thank them, they were gone.

It occurred to me, as David and I listened to these remarkable stories, that in this world where death seems to be rising at the hands of lawlessness and increasing militarism, that we need to know (and teach our children, our grandchildren and others) how to find God in the everyday.

The God Hunt is a simple practice that yields profound results. “Seek me and you will find me if you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” proclaims the prophet Jeremiah on behalf of the Lord. Jeremiah 29:13-14a.

Let’s concentrate in the next few blogs on learning to go on the God Hunt—a kind of spiritual quick-stepping (in light of the dancing metaphor I have been employing to open our thinking about stepping into God’s sacred rhythms) that makes us aware of God’s daily activity in our lives. When we learn to intentionally seek for God every day, we can become breathless with how frequently He extends His hand to us, pulls us close and twirls us around.

The first question we must ask is: Am I looking for God in my everyday world?

The second question we must consider is: Am I finding Him?

Karen Mains

Other projects involving Karen right now are: Working with teams of Christian women to design Retreats of Silence, in both 24-hours and three-days formats, through the aegis of Hungry Souls. Developing hospitality initiatives that train Christian men and women how to use their own homes in caring outreaches through the Open Heart, Open Home ministries. Launching the Global Bag Project, a worldwide effort that markets sustainable cloth shopping bags to provide sustainable incomes for bag-makers in developing nations. Researching the impact of listening groups while overseeing some 240 small groups over the last three years. Experimenting with teleconference mentoring for Wannabe (Better) Writers. Designing the Tales of the Kingdom Web site.

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