In this place? At this time in history? Doing the things you are doing? Surrounded by these people?
Why not any other place? Any other time, doing anything else, surrounded by any other people?
This is, arguably, the root existential question of humanity. The one that all religions, if they’re worth their salt, try to answer. Here’s a really poignant take on this from the Apostle Paul:
From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.
(Acts 17:26-27)
Why here and now? Doing this among these people? So that you might seek and find God. Because he’s really not as far off as it might seem.
If I may be so bold, I’d add to what Paul says by saying that in addition to you finding him, you being in the here-and-now, is for the further purpose of helping others seek and find God as well. To be a light in the difficult darkness, as this poem expresses:
We have to be candles
burning between
hope and despair,
faith and doubt,
life and death,
all the opposites.
That is the disquieting place
where people must always find us.
And if our life means anything,if what we are goes beyond the monastery walls and
does some good,
it is that somehow,
by being here,
at peace,
we help the world cope
with what it cannot understand.
William Brodrick
(from Celtic Daily Prayer, by the Northumbria Community)
Even from a safe social distance, who do you know that you can you help to seek and find God today? Who can you help cope with what they cannot understand?
