Finding God in Our Beautiful, Broken World

I was having an online discussion recently with someone who does not believe in God. He agreed that we cannot know for absolute certainty if there is a God, but he said for him, it is simply easier to believe that God does not exist. To believe in God, for him, was too much of a leap.
That made me stop and think. Which is easier to believe?

I look at my three little girls. Two them right now are sharing a toy. They are laughing and giggling. They are very young, and yet they love each other thoroughly. They share affection and loyalty and companionship. They are partners.
I met my husband fifteen years ago. We know each other inside and out. We know the other's strengths and weaknesses. And we are more deeply in love with each other now than we were fifteen years ago.

And there was recently a tornado in our area. Thousands of people have donated their time, money, and resources to help the strangers affected. During times of disaster, people are very rarely ever alone.

So it's easier to believe that there is no God? It's easier to believe that love and loyalty and altruism and forgiveness are happy coincidences?

That's something I can't wrap my head around.

I've always been a bit confused by the idea of finding God in all things. It's not that I disagreed with the concept; I just didn't exactly understand what exactly it meant.

But now I look outside my windows and I see tulips blooming after a fairly brutal winter. They bloomed last year. They will bloom next year. Their reliability and beauty and symmetry the same now as they have always been.

I see a world that revolves around beautifully complicated and elegant scientific principles that never falter and never fail, regardless of whether we understand them or not.

I see reproduction and regrowth occurring in every corner of the Earth by every species on this planet. I see renewal and regrowth.

I see all of this, and I wonder, in a world of possibility, hope, faith, love, forgiveness, complexity, simplicity, creativity, art, and altruism, is it possible to keep our eyes open and not see God?

To me it's not. To me, it never could be. For me, I look out at the world, and I cannot help but see God. And I feel blessed to see God. And I find myself constantly searching more and more to see God, to find God, everywhere that my eye falls.

And perhaps that's one of God's greatest blessings He bestows on us -- the ability and the privilege of seeing Him even as we reside in our fallen world.

I look around me today, and I say thanks. Because this world is beautiful. And God is beautiful. And I am blessed to reside in the embrace of both.