When our Blessed Mother Mary, or Mama Mary as I like to call her, received the visit of the Angel Gabriel and he announced to her that she had been chosen by God to be the mother of His Son, Mama Mary remained humble as she always had been. The first thing she did after finding out the Big News was to go visit and serve her cousin Elizabeth who was also expecting a child. She could have expected others to serve her since she was carrying God, but that's not what she did. She put her cousin's needs before her own. She jumped in top of a donkey and she went to serve. And while serving her cousin Elizabeth, she saw the face of God in her cousin.
God is in all the people that we encounter every day. He is in our spouse or significant other. Yes, even when he/she annoys us and gets on our nerves. When we look at the face of the one we love, we are looking at the face of God.
God is in our children, grandchildren, godchildren, nieces and nephews. It is easy to see God in babies. When we look at the face of a baby, it reminds us of baby Jesus. It's still easy to see God in little children. Oh, but when they become annoying teenagers, it becomes harder. His image gets out of focus. And when they become smarty pants adolescents, who think they know more than us, then it's really difficult to see God in them. But He is still there. We just need to look a little deeper.
God is in our elderly parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and neighbors. He is in the nursing homes. He is in those we love that no longer recognize us because they are suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's. And that's the reason why we need to visit them, love them and care for them. If we look deep into their lost eyes, we can see God staring back at us. If we abandon them, we are abandoning God.
God is present in the people we work with. He is in our supervisors and our managers. Even if they are tyrants who use their power to abuse us and they have no consideration for us. He is in the selfish co-worker who seems to find joy in making our day difficult. He is in the client or patient or customer who complaints all the time and has become an annoyance who doesn't allow us to get our work done in peace. God has placed them in our life for a reason and we have to smile and be pleasant, no matter how impossible that may seem, because we may be the only God that they ever see.
God is in the grocery store clerk, in the bank teller, in the hairdresser, in the handiman, in the gardener, in the housekeeper, in the doctor, in the dentist... He is in all the people that cross our paths on our daily lives. He is also in the homeless person who stands at the busy intersection every day hoping that we lower the window and give him/her the spare change that we keep in the car. But when he/she walks towards our car, we look the other way, pretending we don't see him/her and we excuse ourselves by thinking that if we give them a dollar they are going to spend it on drugs. Woe to us if that poor homeless went without food because he/she couldn't collect the five bucks that he/she needed for a meal. Or if his/her children went hungry because the parent has not been able to find a job and had to resort to begging. God is in that homeless person. And we are going to be judged not on what the homeless did with the dollar we gave them, we are going to be judged whether we helped them or looked the other way. If we are so concerned on how they will spend our hard earned dollar, we could also bring them a meal, a change of clothing or a bag filled with toiletries.
God is in all the people. The good, the bad and the ugly. He is in the rich and the poor. He is in the healthy and the sick. He is in those we like and in those that annoy us. And He is also in you and in me. We were all created in His image. When you look in the mirror, stop for a second and look well. You are staring at the face of God. He lives within each one of us. What God are others seeing in us?
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