God defined

Imagine you are in a car commercial. You know, one of those where you are in complete peace, in the middle of West Texas surrounded by desert with beautiful snow-covered mountains rising in front of you and dust and pebbles fanning out in a cloud behind you. The sky is the prettiest blue you could ever imagine, with just a few fluffy, white clouds speckling it. The only thing you can hear is the overwhelming silence broken by your heartbeat and your favorite song blasting so loudly that you do not hear it, but rather you feel the base pumping in rhythm with your heart. You look around, and you are not in a car. You are on a bike, gliding down the only dirt path for as far as you can see. You can feel the wind whipping past your face. It is about sixty degrees, just cold enough that you are not sweating even though your legs are peddling hard, and your throat stings ever so slightly when you breathe in the air, cool and pure. There is one lone dirt mountain directly in front of you, and as you approach it, you begin gathering your strength for the climb, and the overwhelming emotion that fills you is determination. It is the most alone you have ever felt. Yet, you feel something tugging at the edges of your consciousness — the feeling that you are not alone. You are filled with an overwhelming peace, and it is exhilarating.

This is the exact scene that played through my mind as the TCU Swim Team did a forty-five minute cycling class before getting in the water one Wednesday. That same week, I had been challenged at church with the question, "What would you say if you were asked to define God?" I came up with all of the "ordinary" answers: Creator of the Universe, Father, Mother, Comforter, Redeemer... but none of those seemed good enough. If the person I was talking to knew nothing about God, these answers would be too general and vague. They leave too many gaps, which makes me want to say that He is inexplicable... also an inadequate answer for someone who knows nothing about God.

So I'm sitting in cycling class, with this image rolling through my head, and that's when it occurs to me. God is like a car commercial. Ha-ha. No seriously. OK, so maybe God is not exactly like a car commercial, but He is that feeling. That overwhelming medley of determination, loneliness, exhilaration, peace, and tranquility. And the knowledge — no matter how slight — that you are not alone.