What can separate us from the love of God? According to St. Paul, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ.

Think of the implications of Paul’s statement! Nothing can separate us from God’s love! We are in communion with the Divine, living in God’s presence at every moment of our lives, and nothing can change that.

When we go about our daily business, go to work, shop for groceries, work in the yard, God’s love is with us. In moments of great joy and in moments of despair or sadness, God’s love is fully present. Whether we’re alone or surrounded by people, whether we’re feeling good about ourselves or painfully conscious of our mistakes or failures, God’s love is still there. Nothing we can do or say, no person, event or circumstance can separate us from communion with the Divine.

If we could only stay conscious of God’s constant presence and love, we wouldn’t ride the perpetual rollercoaster of emotions--hope and despair, peace and turmoil. But we are human beings, limited in our perceptions, assailed by doubts and fears, subject to our changing emotions. We are on a spiritual journey, which means we are struggling to become more aware of God’s presence and more open to God’s love. We are on a quest for inner peace in the midst of the chances and changes of this life.

Jesus offers us a beautifully crafted string of parables about the paradox of being human beings trying to relate to the divine. The first three parables refer to God as something hidden, or hard to see. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, or yeast, or hidden treasure. Let me pause and say that the phrase, “the kingdom of heaven” is a roundabout way of speaking about God, because for a devout Jew to utter God’s name was blasphemous. So “the kingdom of heaven” is not a reference to the afterlife, as you might think, but to God.

God is like a mustard seed—the smallest of all the seeds. They really are tiny—they look like specks of ground pepper. So you can barely see them—and then what happens when you plant them in the ground? They disappear! And it looks like nothing is happening for a good while until the seed sprouts and comes up.

So Jesus’ teaching is in harmony with our experience—despite St. Paul’s assertion that we are always in communion with the divine, we can’t always see it. It often appears that nothing is happening.

The next parable is similar: God is like yeast that a woman takes and mixes in with 3 measures of flour. Here are two fun facts about this parable. First, the Greek word that is translated “mixes” is really “hides” which goes along with the theme of God being hidden. Second, how much flour do you think 3 measures is? It’s about 50 lbs of flour—this is no small baking project! Jesus seems to be suggesting God is hidden throughout the world, just as yeast is hidden throughout a big, sticky, lump of dough. You can’t see the yeast, and you can’t tell whether it’s doing anything until all of a sudden, the dough starts to rise.

The third parable compares God to hidden treasure—a man just stumbles on it and realizes that he has found something that is infinitely precious. He hides it again, and sells all he has so he can buy the field.

So, if God is hidden, as these parables suggest, how can we see or experience the Divine? Jesus’ parables offer us clues. Sometimes we just stumble on the divine—it’s right in front of us and we practically fall over it, like the man who finds the treasure in the field. We’ve all had those moments. Elizabeth Gilbert, who writes about her spiritual journey in the bestselling book “Eat, Pray. Love” describes it like this: “Most of us, even if only for two minutes in our lives, have experienced at some time or another an inexplicable and random sense of complete bliss, unrelated to anything that was happening in the outside world. One instant, you’re just a regular Joe, schlepping through your mundane life, and then suddenly—what is this?—nothing has changed, yet you feel stirred by grace, swollen with wonder, overflowing with bliss. Everything—for no reason whatsoever—is perfect.” That is stumbling onto the divine.

At other times, we experience the divine in the processes of life and growth that are happening all around us. Tiny seeds that are hidden in the ground grow up to be huge shrubs and become a shelter for the birds of the air. Invisible yeast causes lumpy dough to be transformed into light delicious bread that sustains us. The life force is at work in the natural world, bringing about growth and transformation. And it is also at work within human communities. One of the great joys of life in a faith community is the opportunity to watch people grow. Someone who thought they couldn’t be a leader suddenly looks up and they are leading. Someone who was badly hurt suddenly realizes that there is still life ahead for them. We can even watch our own growth as God works within us to transform us. We let go of old hurts, forgive ourselves for our mistakes, and find that we have more to offer than we thought. We too can be a shelter for others, or life-sustaining bread.

The third way we can encounter the divine according to this set of parables is by looking for it. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. The merchant finds the pearl of great price, because he spends time searching for it. And once he finds it, he sells all that he has to buy it. If we are looking for God, we will find God. Brother Rogers who founded the Taize monastic community in France said that the longing for God’s presence, the desire for communion is already the beginning of faith. He also says that awareness of God, and the mystery of faith, does not happen all at once, but in stages, a little bit at a time. In Navajoland, we got up early and spent ten minutes each morning in silent contemplative prayer. And just as in the parables of the mustard seed and the yeast, it often seemed as though nothing was happening. But as we continue that practice of sitting still and opening ourselves to God’s presence, we will find that we are more and more aware that God’s love is in us and all around us and nothing can separate us from communion with the divine.

To go back to Elizabeth Gilbert, she spent several months in an Ashram in India meditating. Often it was very hard for her to still her thoughts and she thought she might never experience God’s presence. But after months, she finally did. Here is how she describes that moment: “It wasn’t hallucinogenic, what I was feeling. It was the most basic of events. It was heaven, yes. It was the deepest love I’d ever experienced, beyond anything I could have previously imagined, but it wasn’t euphoric. It wasn’t exciting. There wasn’t enough ego or passion left in me to create euphoria and excitement. It was just obvious. Like when you’ve been looking at an optical illusion for a long time, straining y our eyes to decode the trick, and suddenly your cognizance shifts and there—now you can clearly see it—the two vases are actually two faces. And once you’ve seen through the optical illusion, you can never not see it again. ‘So this is God,’ I thought. ‘Congratulations to meet you.’”

She searched and she found the pearl of great price. If you seek God, you will find God. Her description of what happens next is funny because it is so human. She suddenly has the thought, I want to hold onto this experience forever, and of course, as soon as she thinks that, her sense of communion with God disappears. But God’s message to her at that point was, “you may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here.” And that takes us back to St. Paul—we are always in communion with God, whether we realize it or not. God’s love permeates the entire world, like yeast in a batch of dough. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.