I see hearts all around me. I’ve seen them in big puffy white clouds and I’ve seen them in the knots of old oak trees. I’ve seen them drawn into the scales of a fish and outlined on the back of an insect.  I can trace this fascination to the earliest days of writing a book called Heart Wide Open and I’ve never gotten over it, and I’m okay with that. I hope I never do. 

Not long ago I mentioned this heart thing to my oldest grandson. He was six at the time. We were walking across a parking lot holding hands when I pulled him to a stop and showed him a heart formed from the mortar of the pavement at our feet. “God shows me those,” I told Grant. “He knows I like to see them, so He shows them to me. It’s like a little note from heaven right in the middle of the day. When I see it, I think about how much God loves us and I have a little party in my own heart.”

My next trip to Houston to see “The Grand Boys of Texas”, featured a sweet surprise. I learned that Grant Thomas had become a heart seeker in his own right.  And he was good at it! Grant showed me all kinds of hearts around his house and his mommy said he’d been showing her hearts all around Humble. Of course, the hearts have been there all the time. Grant is just now seeing them– because he’s just now looking for them and expecting to find them.

While I am unapologetically guilty when it comes to over-sharing grandchildren stories, I offer this tale to share a deeper truth I’ve discovered about pursuing God. If we walk in this world demanding special visions or revelations from God that He might prove His existence to us, we seldom find the evidence of God we’re after. However, if we abandon such egocentric demands and focus instead on looking for God and celebrating Him in our everyday unspectacular lives, we find that He is all around us and He has been here all the time. 

…that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ Acts 17:27-28

P.S. If you enjoyed this devotional, you can find a ton more just like it in a devotional I released called Devotions for the Hungry Heart!