Worshipping Air

We moved.  To the most precious town this side of heaven.  Sorry, I know that's cheesy, but we are still the newbies and are completely enamored with the growing season and the farms and the food and the people here.  My new favorite person is this little old lady with dentures that I met at church last Sunday that told me if I sat next to her at the potluck, she promised I wouldn't leave wonderin'.  Town is a five minute walk and farm country is a one minute drive in the opposite direction.  We are the third to last house before the sidewalk ends, so either way, you get to go somewhere.  And it really is beautiful here.  Green.  Trees.  Flowers.  Interesting historic homes with porches.  Southern homes.  Old trucks.  New trucks.  Lots of trucks.  Churches.  One two doors down and across the street and one on the other side of the neighbors on the right.  And land.  Land in every direction, just about.  You could call it God's country, could easily hear Him breathing there.

So...Yesterday I was driving home in my newly repaired vehicle through a not so attractive part of a city near us.  We go to the city for big stuff and for things like a CarMax car warranty.  So when we hit it, the edge of the city, and we kept driving in, my oldest leaned forward. 

And he said. 

Mom, we don't fit here.  And it is, I don't know.  Just.  I don't fit.

And what he meant was that the place was run down and ugly and tumbling and had weeds all over but no trees and lots of empty strips of stores ran together and it just looked like a place of little hope.

Made me appreciate our new home and big yard and the tree lined sidewalk into town.  A place where my boys can roam and wrestle with the neighbor's dogs and swing on ropes hanging from trees.  A place that for us, offers new hope after a long hard haul.

And then, I thought of a dinner we went to once where I had to explain God to a group of Hindu women.  And they told me about the Catholics in India that were surely more serious than me.  They worshipped nothing.  No statue or picture of their God.  They worshipped air.

Air.

And I thought, God, He floats even in a place looking like little to no hope.  In places where a picture or a statue or a fancy replica would not belong.

May not be my version of heaven.  My pretty new house with my quiet corner and grass growing in the proper places.  My place to breathe Him in.

But God, well, He still floats there.  Just on the edge of the city.

Just like He floats near me.

(And He floats in India too.)