Finding God Despite The Clutter

This has been a particularly stressful week, feeling a whole lot more like work than ministry, even though I occasionally experience brief glimpses of God while rushing through the busy days.

September, for a church, is among the busiest of times. As in schools and extracurricular programs across North America, the shifting colors of the leaves on the trees and the cooler, darker nights signal a marked change from the lazy days of summer, when the pews are more empty than not with cottagers having made their escape to the hinterlands and young people having departed to create happy memories at camp.

Fall brings everyone back along with the competition to capture the interests of the people. It is then that schools, churches and extracurriculars scramble to bolster their numbers and woo the disenchanted into their walls.

Hence my multiple hours of overtime this week. Part of my job is encouraging and ministering to young people. That means developing programming and being on site for that programming, attending to every minute detail of that programming and attracting as much interest as possible in that programming.

But every now and then, between the phone calls about registration details and the visits to sports suppliers and the trips to buy sheets of generic cookies and sweets, amidst the sharpening of pencils and the creation of flyers and the countless hours on email and the phone to spread the word of events and programs, despite the rumors that my contract will not be renewed when my work year has come to an end and the conversations where the boss tells me that I am the reason the church cannot make ends meet ... in spite of all of that, somehow, some way, the glimpses of God abound.

When a single, beaming child shows up to a new program and his parent indicates how important and helpful this is, and asks how can they get involved with other things going on, God is there.

When I find myself alone in the church, waiting for others to arrive, and I sit and watch the late afternoon sunlight beaming through the stained glass windows, creating dancing, radiant colors on the concrete walls, and I strain to hear that still, silent voice within me, God is there.

When someone, unprompted, says, "I really like the changes I am seeing since you got here," God is there.

When a child smiles at me during the Mass, God is there.

I have to look very hard for God in weeks like this, but God doesn't disappoint. God is there.

God is here.