In today’s lesson from Acts, the apostle Paul tells the Athenians that they don’t have to search for God because “he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’ “ How do you make sense of that explanation? To me, it speaks of the womb of God from our prenatal experience of living and moving and having our being in the womb. I picture the entire expanding cosmos in the womb of God, who is enfolding all creation in Love. This enfolding is what the quantum physicist, David Bohm, calls the Implicate Order.

Our gospel today also speaks of the nearness of God, from within as well as from without. We hear Jesus tell his disciples in his farewell discourse to them in the upper room that he will not leave them, nor us, orphaned when he departs his earthly life, He says that God will send “another Advocate, to be with you forever. . . the Spirit of truth . . . abides with you, and he will be in you.” We recognize the Advocate he speaks of as the Holy Spirit in our midst. Jesus goes on to point out that “I am in the Father, and you in me, and me in you.” How much clearer can we have the indwelling of God spelled out for us? Bohm calls the Divine unfolding from within the Explicate Order as God works in us and through us to sanctify creation.

Saints and mystics through the ages have described God as nearer than our very breath. From scripture we know it is the breath of God (ruach, breath, wind, spirit) that enlivens us (Gen.2:7) and fills us with the Holy Spirit (Jn.20:22). When we take time to focus our attention on our breathing, we may experience the nearness of God in the here and now and come to realize that God is indeed not far from us.