When have you noticed God at work?  What is the first sign which leads you to suspect that God may be at work?

In The Star Thrower, Loren Eiseley writes about “discerning in the flow of ordinary events the point at which the mundane world gives way to quite another dimension.”  Has your world ever given way to another dimension?  Have you ever slipped, slid, fallen, floated, drifted into another, sacred world?

I’m writing this post while sitting in a local cafe.  Almost everyday the largest table in the place is circled by a group of older men who drink espressos and cappuccinos and converse mostly in Italian.  Twice this morning one of them has asked to borrow the stool next to me in order to expand their circle.  The conversation never lags and sometimes it gets pretty noisy.  As I read the Eiseley quote and watched these men I dropped into another dimension.  This same movement that happens in the song, “What a Wonderful World”:

I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They’re really saying I love you

Louis Armstong was listening for another dimension in a mundane human interaction and easily sidled into it.  This is of course, what your friends do when they hear what your heart is trying to say.  Sometimes it can change your life, sometimes it is just a pleasant little reminder that we are not alone.

I recently heard of an architectural firm which decided to remove the “architecture” from their name and replace it with “design.”  They wanted to emphasize that the mission of their company was to design environments and not simply buildings.  They wanted their architects to probe another dimension (underneath the three dimensions of space).  They wanted to imagine the way the spaces created by their buildings affected the emotions and outlook and interactions of the people within these environments.  It takes foresight for an architect to create blueprints for a stable, functional, and beautiful structure.  For a designer to create plans for a healthy, inspiring, collaborative environment, it takes foresight as well.  But that foresight must be preceded by and is dependent upon insight.

We often talk about prophets being able to see into the future in order to foretell what is going to happen.  But the foresight of the prophet is an outgrowth of insight, the ability to step into holy places.  Malcolm Muggeridge writes about this in A Third Testament:  “Those who see deeply into the nature of life are able to project this knowledge into the future, and so in some degree to foretell it.”  Prophets are in touch with the deep current of history which underlies the visible ripples and waves which flow across the surface.

Speaking in theological terms, prophets have insight into who God is and how God works.  When speaking of God, insight takes precedence over foresight.  This is well correlated with an understanding of God as eternal.  God has no need to see into the future because God is in the future.  God has no need to plan for the future because God is at work in the future.

Faith in the eternal God values insight, timeless insight.  So sneak, slink, or slither into the dimension of the spirit.