To this day I don’t know why I was awakened with that knowledge — that vision. But one thing I know is that I’m grateful for the experience.

Since that time — at least on my good days — I have been trying to make the words of a favorite hymn a reality in my life. "Be thou my vision," the classic hymn reads; "Naught be all else to me save that Thou art."

One of the ways that I try to make God my sole vision is by looking for evidence of God in everything and everyone that exists. Like the potter’s mark on the bottom of her pot, the divine fingerprint is on each thing the Creator brought into being. There is nothing in this world that does not reveal some aspect of God’s divine presence and hopes. My task is to look for, recognize, and give thanks for that.

It’s easy to see God in the familiar. Maybe you’ve seen the children’s book Old Turtle by Douglas Wood. The mountain sees God as tall and mighty. The fish sees God as a swimmer in the deep. The bear understands God as powerful. Each one sees God as a reflection of itself until Old Turtle reminds them that God is all these things, and more. We, too, tend to see the characteristics of God and God’s presence in ways we understand already. But try expanding that vision. Can you begin to see God in unexpected ways and places?

Find an object, something you wouldn’t ordinarily think of as holy, and spend 15 minutes looking carefully at it to see what it can tell you of God’s actions in the world. Any object will do. I’m looking at wooden shutters right now, for example. They open and close to let light in and out. Each slat is unique — some light pieces of wood, and some dark — and yet they are all beautiful pieces of wood working together to accomplish a particular task. The shutters remind me that God made each of us unique, but still asks us to work with each other. They also remind me that God gave us the choice to be open or closed to the Light.

Once you’re comfortable with seeing God’s fingerprint in unexpected ways through objects, begin looking at people in the same way. How is God at work in your neighbor, friend, and even the stranger in line with you at the grocery store? If we were made in God’s image, we must each reflect that reality in some way. Can you see it in others?

Reminders of God’s presence and hopes surround us at all times in everything that exists. Our task is to open our hearts and eyes — physical or metaphorical — to see them, and then God will be, as the hymn says, our only vision.

Debra K. Farrington has written eight books of Christian spirituality. Check out her Web site at www.debrafarrington.com

This article is published in the March 2008 issue of Lutheran Woman Today.