Saturday, December 19, 1998

We're always looking for God

By Ken Garfield

Knight Ridder Newspapers

In another lifetime, Sharon and I couldn't decide whether to move from Shelby, N.C., to small-town South Carolina, so we asked our pastor to come and counsel us. At the end of the conversation, we closed our eyes and bowed our heads, and he prayed that we might know God's will.

Turns out I took the newspaper job and we moved. But to be perfectly frank, at that point in my spiritual life, I'm not sure it was God's will or just the offer of a better job and more money.

In seven years on the religion beat, I've met all kinds of faithful people who sense God's will in all kinds of ways.

I've had people tell me that God has come to them with bolts of lightning. Some say it's a whisper in their ear that leads to the heart. Others speak of spotting angels who serve as his emissaries.

But for every believer who can find God and feel certain what he wants with us, how many fail to see and hear him in this noisy world?

Lots, according to Nicole Myers of Kannapolis.

Myers leads workshops on reducing stress and finding inner peace. She has taught deep breathing exercises to business people and counseled NASCAR drivers on how to form a mental picture of what they want their lives to look like.

But deepest of all, she helps people look for God. That elusive search, she said, is a thread that runs through the lives of so many people. "They want to feel like they're being guided," Myers told me. "That they're not alone."

Some people have found what they're looking for. One workshop participant swore that God talked to her through a hawk flying by. Others testify to a warm feeling coming over them. "It's a knowing," Myers said. "People said, 'I felt something touch me.' "

Others, though, go untouched.

"People can't get past all the internal chatter," she said. "They're so used to controlling their life, controlling people around them. They're not allowing something else to come from within."

Myers works to get these folks to tune out the internal chatter. Have you ever begun to pray, only to remember in the middle that one of the kids has a dental appointment the next day?

She tries to get them to see life as a river flowing downstream, not upstream. Relax, and allow yourself to be taken for a ride.

And she respects any way that people come to recognize God.

"I don't find anything odd anymore," said Myers, 31, a New Jersey native who moved South three years ago to be closer to family. "Some people have even seen things happen, that there was a spirit in the room with them, an angel in the room with them.

"If you think that it can happen, it can. Have faith. God wants us to have everything in his kingdom available to us. All they need to do is imagine it's possible."

I was interviewing two people of faith the other day for a difficult story I'm working on. We finished our conversation with the fate of the piece still unresolved. When we shook hands to say goodbye, one of the folks said he's confident I'll know what God's will is in all this.

I nearly said that I'd seek the wisdom of God, and a couple of high-ranking editors. I'm glad I didn't because our faith demands more of us than flippancy.

It demands that we look for God in everything we do, with a seriousness that will help us tune out the chatter and allow us to see that life can be lived floating downstream.

I'm not sure yet whether faith means that we always find God.

But I think it means we're always looking for him.

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(Ken Garfield is the religion editor at The Charlotte Observer. Write to him at: The Charlotte Observer, 600 S. Tryon St., Charlotte, NC 28232.)

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(c) 1998, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).

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