Several years ago I drove down the California coast from Los Angeles to a small seaside community. I sat on a bench on a cliff edge near the ocean to rest awhile, enjoying the salty air. After several minutes, I looked down and saw a little lizard on a rock near my feet. This was not a surprising sight, as there are a lot of lizards in Southern California. They seem to like the hot, dry weather. The lizard’s body remained still, but he turned his head up to look at me, almost as if he knew that I had seen him there. We sat there looking at each other, my new lizard friend and I. And then something strange happened. It felt as if he was saying something to me. He was talking, but not with words — at least, not words that I could recognize. (Perhaps he was speaking in a lizardy language that I didn’t understand.) I felt the strength of his message. It felt like being struck by a force-field of love. I was suddenly completely surrounded by love. I knew that I was deeply and forever loved. And, to my surprise, I also felt deep love for the little lizard. To be clear, I think lizards are ok, but I don’t carry any strong feelings for them one way or the other. And I certainly don’t often have spiritual encounters with them! But, in a matter of minutes, this little guy had become very dear to me.
I look back on that moment now with great fondness. It was a “God moment” so profound that I think I will carry it with me for the rest of my life. God spoke to me through the lizard and told me how much I was loved. In the moment, I couldn’t do anything other than feel it and then send that love back out to the lizard and to the rest of the world around me.
God’s love is here. It is all around us, within us, and within all of the created universe. There is nothing and no-one here that God does not love. May we be open to receiving God’s love as ours, and sending it back out to be shared with others.