The Presence of God-Imagination or Reality?

If God is big and so powerful and so active and so involved and so on top of his game plan of making his kingdom come, then why does it sometimes seem like feeling God's presence is an imaginative maneuver that I haven't quite mastered. If God is there and if God is real, then why is it so hard to see him? You'd think the creator of the universe would be a little bit more obtrusive. But as it stands, God has created a world in which he seems largely absent. Things run their course on their own. The waves continue to crash. The traffic ebbs and flows. The electricity continues to pump into my house (along with the water and gas).

You can't have coffee with God. You can't play tennis with God. You can't hug God. Sometimes I feel like for God to exist, I have to imagine that he's there. If God's presence was so obvious, more people would believe in him. But there are lots of people who don't believe in God. Therefore, it is not obvious to most people that God exists. Then, am I right in thinking that belief takes a bit of imagination? After all, it wouldn't be called "faith" if God were obvious. Faith takes many risks...including the risk of appearing to conjure up God.

I'm 95% sure that the problem with many American Christians is that they don't really believe God is real. Not only do they not believe that God is real, but they don't really believe in eternity either. In fact, I think that many of us are so stuck in our own day to day affairs that we have virtually no conception of the impact that our actions or lack of action could have on the eternal state of our own fellow human beings. Eternity is a long time. It's a much longer time than any of us ever spends here on earth. Are we living life with the proper perspective given how little time we have and how urgent the gospel message is? Has a 2000 year wait and many failed doomsday predictions dulled us into thinking that the end is no where near? Do we pray the Lord's prayer and mean it, especially the part about "your kingdom come?"

This is my prayer: "Dear Heavenly Father, please, please be obnoxiously obtrusive in my life. Forgive me for being so blind to your presence. Give me a story to tell about your saving power in my life. Use me to spill your saving power into the lives of my neighbors. Amen."

The Vanderbilt Summer Home

This mansion was the sumemr home for a number of Vanderbilt generations. The inside is quite lavish, emulating the French royalty style. Supposedly, this mansion is the last vestige of the Guilded age. No one could afford a palace of this size in the 1930s and the family money soon dissappeared. No flash photos were allowed inside, sorry.

World Yacht - Dinner on the Hudson overlooking Manhattan

What a wonderful date! We went out for my birthday. I totally recommend this for anyone coming to NY. $90 per person gets you dinner and a four hour yacht cruse down the Hudson to the financial district, a solid view of Lady Liberty and back again with Filet for dinner. (Wine costs extra). Service is very good, but the music was a little loud. People really dress up for this and I heard more Spanish and french? than English.