There are moments when God feels unmistakably near.
And then there are seasons when He does not.
I have known both.
For a long time, I thought meaningful encounters with God were supposed to happen in recognisably spiritual places: in church, during prayer, while reading Scripture, perhaps while singing a hymn that suddenly reaches somewhere deeper than words.
But I am learning that grace is rarely confined to the places where we expect to find it.
Sometimes God meets us in the quiet of an early morning with an open Bible.
Sometimes He meets us in a question we cannot answer.
Sometimes in music.
Sometimes on a mountain path, when the noise inside us finally becomes quiet enough for us to listen.
And sometimes He meets us in places we would never have chosen to enter at all: in grief, disappointment, fear, anger, loneliness, or the bewildering silence that comes when we have prayed and nothing seems to change.
I have discovered something important in those places.
God is not frightened by our questions.
We do not have to tidy ourselves up before coming into His presence. We do not have to pretend that we understand. We do not have to manufacture certainty when what we actually have is confusion.
We can come honestly.
“Lord, I don’t understand.”
“Lord, where were You?”
“Lord, why did You allow this?”
“Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”
Those, too, can be prayers.
Perhaps some of our deepest encounters with God begin not when we finally have all the answers, but when we stop hiding the questions.
That has changed the way I approach Scripture.
I no longer want merely to read the Bible to confirm what I already believe. I want to sit with the text. To ask difficult questions. To understand what it actually says. To allow it to challenge me. And then to ask the question that has increasingly become important to me:
What does this mean for the way I live today?
Because an encounter with God should eventually change something.
Perhaps not everything at once.
Sometimes grace changes us almost imperceptibly. It teaches us to trust again. To forgive when forgiveness feels impossible. To surrender something we have desperately tried to control. To recognise God in an ordinary moment. To become still. To begin again.
That is what these reflections are about.
They are not the writings of someone who has arrived.
They come from the journey.
From Scripture studied and wrestled with. From questions asked honestly. From prayers whispered when there were no eloquent words left. From music. From beauty. From sorrow. From moments of unexpected joy. And from those quiet occasions when, looking backwards, I realised:
God was there.
Perhaps you have known some of those places too.
So this is my invitation.
Come a little closer.
Bring your Bible.
Bring your questions.
Bring the parts of your story that make sense and the parts that do not.
We will seek. We will listen. We will wrestle with Scripture. We will leave room for mystery. And, above all, we will keep looking towards the One who promised:
“You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”
Jeremiah 29:13
Not every encounter with God is dramatic.
Some begin very quietly.
With an open Bible.
An honest question.
And a heart willing to listen.
Come. Seek. Listen. Encounter.