This mismatch between the setting we think God should use, and the setting that God does use, when God is particularly manifest, like in the Great Theophany of Jesus’ Baptism, is important and needs to be kept constantly in mind.

Let’s imagine, shall we, that God hasn’t changed that preference in the years since the biblical accounts were written. We should thus still expect to see God, not in the centers of human power, or the great majestic landscapes of Earth, or in the obvious moments when numberless crowds of people gather for an event. But rather in the small every day events of a common person’s life, the sort of events we each experience day after day: making a cup of tea, sitting in a chair, quietly reading, walking along a beach, fishing in a boat, or eating with friends.

That’s when God chooses to reveal God’s self to us.

And to go a step further, it’s not the great and the powerful, the rich or accomplished that God seems to use to change things on earth. It’s the small and un-noteworthy, the elderly and the infirm, the young and the powerless, the poor and the outcast. If you would seek God, given the narrative we have, then that’s where you should start looking.

And if you think of yourself of part of that group of people, and not one of the great people of the community, then rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for it is likely that God is very near to you. The Holy Trinity itself might be manifest to you at any moment, just as it was in the events of the baptism of a young man in a backwater, on a small and reedy river in the Roman Province of Palestine.

There is a direct link to the video here.

My apologies for the unfortunate framing in the video about 1/3 of the way in from the beginning. There’s a bug in the software apparently in the iPhone that I’m using and it changes randomly sometimes when I’m filming. Grrrr. I ran out of time to reshoot it today. Someday perhaps I’ll find someone to help me out with the filming.