Pareidolia

Let us, your servants, see you work again; let our children see your glory. [Psalm 90.16]

The psalmist (in this case, Moses) makes a sincere plea with God to see His power once again work on behalf of His people.

Is this not what we should be praying today?

I have said it many times in the context of this blog that we are largely missing the power of God in our lives.  

We are no strangers to the idea that 'the power of God is evident all around us' - this talk has been the subject of Sunday School lessons and sermons for years and years.  But I am not talking about this libertarian and abstract idea of seeing God and His work!  I am talking about real events explained by absolutely no other elucidation than that they were very unconventional, perpendicular-to-the-norm acts of God.  These types of events are precisely what Moses would have been referring to in this Psalm: the Red Sea parting, manna, water from a rock, etc.

God does not need for us to make stuff up to make Him look good to everyone around us who may doubt His existence!  Christians have become infected with Pareidolia (seeing shapes in the clouds)!  We have become far too abstract in our claims about God to an increasingly skeptical world, and it is time that we stop!  It is time that we finally concede that God's power and substance are largely missing from our daily lives and that we need a revival of His presence among us!  We need His presence among us in the same way the nations who interacted with displaced Israel saw their God interacting with and for them!  We need to take the words of Psalm 90.16 to heart and pray them fervently until we witness substantial unnatural evidence of God's intervention.

Yes, the implications here are brutal on modern Christianity.  But the fact is, 'modern Christianity' has become as abstract a statement as 'a powerful God'.  Christians and God have lost definition in the world!  We see very little validation among so-called Christians.

But it is not God's fault.  The fault lies with me.  The fault lies with anyone who has ever been satisfied to 'see' God in the world and in themselves as one sees meaning in an abstract painting!

Father, let us see You work again!  We live in a microchip age of knowledge when everything has a "natural explanation."  We no longer see the powerlessness of our lives as a spiritual 'red flag.'  Please forgive me for being satisfied with an abstract view of You when all the history of the Bible screams that You wish to interact with Your people in a non-abstract way!