The God
Hunt
Tracking
God’s Involvement in the Everyday
By Karen
Burton Mains (from out-of-print pamphlet by Chapel
of the Air Ministries)
Making Sightings
My oldest son and I stole one fall
day together and headed toward Horicon, a wildlife sanctuary in
Since on this visit to Horicon the
migratory activity was quiet, Randall and I took to the trails to make other
bird Sightings. It is wonderful to go birding with my son because be is a
serious ornithologist who is rarely far from a pair of binoculars or a field
guide. Some of my most cherished memories have been shared with Randall—early
morning walks in forest preserves watching the wacky mating dance of the ducks,
laughing at anhingas swimming underwater on Sanibel Island in Florida,
constructing a personality profile on bird watchers, and learning to love the
particular peculiarity of bird names, like the Great Potoo, the Satin Bowerbird,
or the Purple Gallinule.
Randall’s identification ability
amazes me. His eye has become so
developed he can tell the species of a bird by the shape of its tail in flight
or by its unique soaring patterns, or even by my inadequate descriptions over
the phone. Outside our bedroom window is the “bird tree." Here the birds stack
up in landing patterns as they wait to feed at the feeders which hang outside
the first-floor windows. Often while talking on the phone, I watch the
chickadees and downy woodpeckers and nuthatches crack open the sunflower seeds
they have gathered. Frequently, I interrupt conversations with Randall to say,
"Oh, there's the most unusual little yellow bird with black breast stripes, the
size of a finch but not a finch.”
“That's a magnolia warbler." Randall
informs me. They're migrating. If you look around, you'll probably see others,
since they usually migrate in groups."
And sure enough, as I look, I discover a variety of little birds with a
variation of coloring, and I feel privileged that they have chosen our yard and
bushes and feeders for resting from their spring flight.
Like all good ornithologists.
Randall keeps a life identification list. There are about 9,000 species of birds
in the world, and this feathered treasure hunt goes on for the bird-lover as
long as he or she lives.
Going on the God Hunt is much like
being serious about ornithology. One takes a “field guide" and a good pair of
"binoculars" and walks out into the world, watching for God. When making God
sightings, our field guide is the Scriptures, which point out the intrinsic
details of the nature of God. They tell us how God acts and how to identify the
supernatural, which co-exists with the natural world. Prayer is the illuminator,
the binoculars, the communication form that magnifies the seeing ability of the
inward eyes.
My husband David and I also keep a
"life list"—we have formed a habit of writing down our different sightings. This
discipline has heightened the inward eye's ability to see God. We can catch the
quick flight of supernatural wings; we can hear the high rooming call and know
it is he: we can tell by the soaring pattern that the "divine eagle" is
.watching high above; this pinion dropped on our path is a reminder of his
presence.
The God Hunt is any time God
intervenes or works in our everyday world and we recognize it to be
him.
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Recognizing
God
Four specific areas have helped us
to distinguish the activity of God, and though we are aware that God can convey
himself to our world by any means be chooses, these four categories are helpful
to the hunter who is just beginning the spiritual adventure of pursuing
God.
The categories
are:
1. Any obvious answer to
prayer
2. Any unexpected evidence of God's
care
3. Any unusual linkage or
timing
4. Any help to do God's work in the
world
Because David and I have developed
the discipline of keeping prayer journals, we have a record
of our requests. When a prayer is
answered, I jot the date and a few details or comments in the column beside the
specific request.
One or two Incidents of seemingly
answered prayers might be called coincidence, but die cumulative evidence of 13
years of answered prayer, all recorded in journals, becomes weighty in its
cumulative effect. It would be next to impossible to convince me that God
doesn't answer prayer -- I have personal and satisfactory evidence to the
contrary.
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Answered
Prayer
An illustration of answered prayer
took a funny turn a number of years ago.
I had promised my administrative assistant that I would speak to a group
of 600 pastors’ wives, but I promised with great reluctance because my schedule
at that time was forbidding. The younger boys and David and I had been involved
in a Christian conference on the West Coast for a week, spent a half week in
transit (on Amtrak), returned home for a week—where I had five broadcasts to
write and record—and then somewhere in here I had to get the four of us ready to
drive to another conference in North
My assistant volunteered to help
with laundry in return for my promise, but when this busy time rolled around,
she was in-the hospital. (I told her that some people would do anything to get
out of work!)
The morning that I spoke to the
pastors' wives, my journal noted that I prayed. "Lord, help me to get a decent
dinner on the table this evening."
The whole family was planning to be home for the evening meal, and there
had been some rather vociferous complaints about my tendency to lean toward
short-order foods in times of busyness.
My speaking topic was "Who Takes
Care of the Caretakers?” And when I
was finished, two young women came to me and said, "Our husbands are occupied
all afternoon, and we really don't have anything we must do. Is there something
we could do to take care of you?”
The short end of this story is that
they came home with me and prepared a wonderful dinner while I finished writing
a broadcast. That next day when I went over my prayer requests, I wrote in the
column. "God, you are something else!” He used two pastors' wives from
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Evidence of God’s
Care
God's unexpected care was
dramatically illustrated in one of the many life preservation incidents which
seem to occur so often in our family. (I often have this terrible feeling that
we have two wheels dangling over some dangerous precipice and the Enemy is
trying to push us the rest of the way over—it is important for me to see God's
hand also involved in this conflict.)
I had stopped in a left-hand lane
behind a car that was waiting to turn left across the highway. It was late afternoon, the traffic was
heavy, and the peculiar sunset light made it hard to notice red brake warnings.
A young woman driving behind me didn't see in time that I was stopped. She
braked, swerved, sideswiped our car, then plowed into the rear end of the
stopped car ahead.
Two of my children were in the car
with me; the young woman was shocked; the older couple in the other car was
stunned—but none of us had sustained any injuries. A big truck pulled up behind
us to art as a shield, I was immediately filled with a sense of the protective
presence of my God. I thought about what might have happened if our car had been
hit directly in the rear by a moving vehicle going 50 miles per hour, or what
might have happened to the car in front of us if we had not been where we were
to slow the impact.
Because I was aware of God's care. I
was supernaturally empowered to minister love. One of the women in the office at
The Chapel of the Air Ministries later finished this tale for me. A friend of
hers lived in the trailer court into which the older couple was turning and knew
that I had been involved in the accident. When the older couple commented on how
kind I had been to them (God's help to do his work in the world), he explained
that I was a Christian.
Even when accidents are involved,
our inner eye sees God's protective hand because we have developed the habit of
looking for God.
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Unusual Linkage or
Timing
Unusual linkage or timing may be
illustrated with an example of the two older children in our family, who were
college students at the time. I have always had difficulty establishing the
discipline of fasting. In fact, t exercise has not been a frequent one in the
spiritual profile of our family. While David was away on a two-week teaching
trip among pastors in
"Ha!" I thought "If my own child can
fast, I ought to be able to stick with it myself!" That was the impetus I
needed, and I was able to maintain a couple days of full fasting as well as keep
a week
of one-meal-a-day
fasting.
In a long-distance phone call, our
daughter, who attended college near
Then I received a phone call from
David in
Linkage—timing. Only God could have
worked this amazing spiritual exercise in the network of our family life to
unite us on a spiritual front so that he could use our prayers in some way in a
special work in
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Help To Do God’s
Work
David and I have countless
illustrations of the last category—any help to do God's work in the world. We
are convinced daily that we couldn't keep the broadcast or writing or speaking
or personal ministries of our lives going without divine intervention. You're
putting a broadcast together, the time for recording it is coming close, and
someone puts an article in your hand that is exactly what is needed to tie the
entire thrust together in a powerful manner.
You've spent a day in the kitchen
cooking favorite recipes, and you just "happen" to stick
several extra casseroles in the
freezer. Someone you love experiences tragedy, and you are able to express that
love in a tangible way by your already prepared gift of
food.
David often talks about the
-naturalness' of the supernatural, about how supernatural surprises are most
often garmented in the ordinary.
Without a doubt, much of this
generation is a glutton for miracles. We prefer the supernatural to invade our
world magically. We want the natural laws of order suspended. We want the bush
to flame and refuse to recognize it if it just rustles. If God does not show
himself accompanied by a puff of smoke, like the proverbial magician, then he's
not God enough, we think.
Consequently, we miss the greater
miracle—that God fills all of life. He makes the ordinary holy with his
presence. He hides himself in the crux of the everyday moment He is intimate.
And we can walk with him, know a form of paradise again, experience him in the
garden among the slugs and hot sun and soil, among the vegetables as well as the
flowers. Wherever we are growing spiritually, God is there—in the naturalness of
the supernatural.
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God Hunt
Exercise
Now begin the God Hunt in
earnest. Make a contract with
yourself to look for God in your everyday world. Choose a time each day to reflect on
God’s involvement in your life [use the Journal
form]…Also determine into which of the four categories these
personal glimpses of God might fall, and record that as well. You’ll be amazed at what you find!