“What is your ‘Seeing God’ song?”
Having asked this question, the professor paused, continuing to look around the classroom at each seminary student.
Seeing the many quizzical eyes staring back at him, he squinted his own and asked again, “What song do you imagine playing when you see God for the first time?” He waited.
I can definitively say I’d never considered this question; and, judging by the prolonged silence of my fellow students, neither had they.
Continuing, he said, “Mine is ‘On the Nature of Daylight,’ by Max Richter. Have any of you heard it?”
There was a burst of exuberant, “yesses!” and “ahhs!”
I sat there, silent, still pondering the initial question, “what is your ‘seeing God’ song?”
I jotted it down in my notes, alongside the professor’s own answer, intending to listen to his as soon as I had a moment to myself; and then, hopefully find my own.
The class, “The Divine Comedy”, didn’t dismiss until 9pm, after which most of us students would gather downstairs under a covered portico to socialize for another hour or so, before returning to our homes, Airbnb’s, and hotels.
It wasn’t until after 10pm that I hopped in my rental car, set up my Bluetooth, and listened to the professor’s “Seeing God” song.
That was almost 4.5 months ago. I’ve now listened to it more than 500 times.
It has become a part of my life. I’ll listen to it while studying, walking, running, meditating, writing, working, driving, hiking—I’ll listen to it while living.
Initially, I found myself being drawn to the song because I wanted to understand why the professor had been so drawn to it! However, as more time and replays went by, I unconsciously found myself seeking his answer less, and my own answer more.
“Why does this song move him?” morphed into, “Why does this song move me?”
Maybe it moved me because I’d spent the previous month-and-a-half falling in love with Dante’s “Divine Comedy”; thus, my poetic and spiritual antennae were unusually high. Maybe its pull on me was attributed to my admiration and respect for the professor ever since I’d had him the previous year in a spellbinding course on early Christian history. Maybe I simply liked the music.
All three of those reasons are undoubtedly true, but there’s something more I’ve been hesitant to admit, even to myself:
This song draws me into God’s presence.
In the strings’ subtle opening, I picture my first, longing inhalation of breath in paradise; as it builds, I envision my eyes opening, sensations awakening, and a love gentler than a lamb and greater than the strong force moving my entire being upward toward Him; then, just before giving me a glimpse of His face, the song slowly returns to its beginning; reminding me that even a song, no matter how glorious, is incapable of fully opening the door to the Beatific Vision.
So, I press repeat, and begin the journey anew. The song hasn’t changed, but I have. Its end won’t be different, but mine will.
Each moment we spend communing with God is a second pulled from eternity and brought into our reality. Time gives way to the eternal; the temporal disappears in the self-illuminating glory of I AM.
You and I can only do one thing in the presence of I AM: be. He calls us to be. Be still. Be here. He says to each of us, “Be with Me as I AM with you.”
The Apostle Paul reminds us, “God is not far from any one of us” for “in Him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:27-28).
If God is not far from any one of us, could it be that He’s closer to you than you’ve ever known?
It’s amazing what God can do with a song if we choose to listen.
It’s amazing what God can do with us if we choose to be.