Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” – Genesis 28:16-17 (NRSVUE)
My son Cade get his driver’s license this past week. It was certainly an important accomplishment for him, and one that he had long looked forward to. He did wonderfully. The test went quickly and easily. The long drawn-out part was the paperwork afterwards. In the testing part of the MVC, there are only two windows for processing new licenses. It is a small space, and so parents are not admitted. The youth need to complete everything themselves. With the Real ID requirements, this can be a complicated process with many forms. If there is even one small issue with the forms filled out, a new form is given to be completed again and then wait for the next time the window is available.
At one point I was called in to sign the parental consent form for those under 18. While inside, I watched as one youth after another was sent back to fill out the forms again. Most of them have never dealt with this kind of rigid procedure. In fact, most of them have rarely had to fill out forms using a pen and paper rather than a computer. It made for a very slow process as they figured out how to navigate the requirements of bureaucracy. That part took much longer than the test itself, and for some caused greater anxiety.
So often it is not the big events that take up our time, energy, and anxiety. It is the onslaught of details. The paperwork to get things done is an ever-present challenge that demands such patience of us. I am not sure that God intended our lives to be consumed by bureaucratic details, but it is our reality. I suspect that God’s intention for us is more focused on interacting with and caring for one another. That being said, the challenge for us on a day-to-day basis is to find God in the midst of all of these small, patience-trying details. It is not hard to think of God in big events and moment; paperwork is more a more challenging place to perceive God at work. Yet it is much of our life, and God does not leave us alone but is always with us. Finding threads of God’s presence in the ordinary is a work of faith. Yet God is there in the care of the parents waiting outside, in the patience of so many of the workers at the MVC correcting the same mistakes over and over, and in the functioning of a system that helps to keep us safe on the roads, to name but a few ways. Where might God be in the mundane details of your day?