God Is In The Details

I was talking to a friend recently and he used the turn of phrase "the devil is in the details" when we were talking about contracts and agreements.  How it is possible to get snagged on a small thing if you're not paying attention; like an increase in interest if you miss just one payment for example. 

I said that I preferred the phrase "God is in the details."  I like it because it invokes the intelligence that is all around us in everything great and small.  Consider the wings of a hummingbird.  Imagine for a moment the level of intelligence and detail that makes this creature possible.

The word WONDER comes to mind.  Devil in the details only invokes fear.  Haven't we had enough of that?   What would it be like if in all our thoughts, actions and interactions we operate from the context that God is in the details and we just come from a place of wonder. 

How can we do that? 

Slowing down is a place to start.  For 150,000 years modern humans have been here.   For thousands of those years literally nothing changed.  If you were to look at a high speed film of the first 149.000 years it would be a monotony of sameness. There was a natural  pace to life that flowed with the rhythm of the days and seasons.  Since the "enlightenment" things have been getting faster and faster. With the advent of radio and TV the cycle revved up. When we got the hand held communicator with all the apps the pace of life is now changing literally second to second.  

Quaker Meeting is the one place in my life where I have been able to carve out this quiet time. I want more limits and sadly I fail regularly in this area. 

When do we slow down?  How can we approach God -- in the details -- if we don't notice them?  If we don't see them.   My favorite poet, Mary Oliver, asks the question "how to be idle and blessed?"  We naturally discover this when we step off the work wheel for a while. We notice that the clouds are not still, but are moving ever so slightly when we look into the sky for no particular reason.  

This slowing down is not just a luxury for those with time, but is essential.   

• How can we be good stewards of ourselves, our relationship to God, our relationship with others and to the Earth without some attention to detail? 

We blithely burned gigatons of fossil fuels and sleep-walked into an earth crisis over the last century by leaving the details to others.   What else have we stepped over?  The great and the small?  Did we miss the smile of a child? Or maybe the way the wings of a hummingbird shimmer? 

God is in each of us.  We are part of the details.  

God is in all things.  We are part of the great whole. 

God is in the details. 

~ Joseph Olejak