God Is Closer Than You Think: If God Is Always with Us, Why Is He So Hard to Find? - John Ortberg
“The central promise in the Bible is not 'I will forgive you,' although of course that promise is there. It is not the promise of life after death, although we are offered that as well. The most frequent promise in the Bible is 'I will be with you'" (16). In this wonderfully accessible yet absolutely profound book, John Ortberg teaches that "The story of the Bible isn’t primarily about the desire of people to be with God; it’s the desire of God to be with people" (14). Using Michelangelo’s famous painting of God and Adam on the ceiling of Sistine Chapel, he shows how God is always rushing toward us, every muscle taught on reaching out to us to share the divine life, but we, like Adam, often recline in a lazy, disinterested pose. All we have to do is lift a finger, and we can connect to God! "This picture reminds us: God is closer than we think. He is never farther than a prayer away. All it takes is the barest effort, the lift of a finger” (14). God is like Waldo in the Where's Waldo books. He is on every page, but is sometimes hard to find. “He may not be absent, but he is elusive” (32). Waldo is hard to find because he is so ordinary-looking. God's revelation works in the same way: “So why doesn’t he send us all dreams every night? Why doesn’t he make every day a rainbow day and send epiphanies twenty-four-seven? Maybe it’s because God wants us to learn to see him in the ordinary rather than be dependent on the extraordinary” (38). Ortberg's reflections on God's presence include chapters on Job, Mary and Martha, the glories of the present moment, and spending a day with God. Great book! Highly recommended!