ex-ude (ig-zood, ik-sood) verb
- radiate, show, display, exhibit, manifest She exudes an air of confidence.
- emit, leak, discharge, ooze, issue, secrete Nearby was a factory which exuded a pungent smell
I love people watching. Most times, when I’m sitting in a plane waiting for others to board, it’s the only thing I have to do. There they are, walking down the isle right past me. The slow boarding pace gives me plenty of time to size them up.
Mother with baby? On her way to see grandma. Young couple holding hands and smiling for no apparent reason? Honeymoon. Man in suit, alone in coach, and with a beat up briefcase? Mid level manager on a day trip to a business meeting. Young adult flying around the holidays? Going home during a college break.
I love people watching for another reason as well. I like to see how they manifest the presence of God in their lives. God, the Bible tells us, and our own experience demonstrates, is inescapable.
Everyone experiences the presence of God – the rock solid reality of the divine. For example, we validate God’s presence when we perceive good and evil, because morality is a personal quality, not a physical quality. And absolute morality can only be found in God.
We acknowledge God’s presence when we perceive the beauty of a kaleidoscopic sunset. We also tacitly acknowledge God when we appreciate the intricate order we see in the universe, or, more explicitly, spontaneously cry out to him to save us when our plane starts falling from the sky.
But it gets better (or worse, depending on your perspective). Not only is God inescapable because he is everywhere outside of us, but he is also everywhere inside of us as well. The Bible teaches this, and again, our own experience demonstrates it.
The Bible tells us that everyone has been created in the image of God. We are not God. We are like God. This means that, while we are in fact animals, we are not just animals. We share certain attributes with God.
God is a personal being with intellect, emotion, and will. We too are personal beings with intellect, emotion and will. God is love and we, too, can love. God is a moral being and we, too, are moral beings. God communicates and we, too, communicate. God acts and we, too, act. God is the basis of all meaning and purpose, and therefore we, too, seek to have meaning and purpose.
Everything I’ve been talking about, both the external and the internal manifestations of God, are experienced by every living person in the world. There is no escaping them. Every moment of every day everyone acts, either consciously or subconsciously, as if God exists. In other words, everyone exudes God.
But here’s the rub – and I alluded to it briefly above – some people are thrilled with God’s reality and seek him out, and others (sadly, the vast majority) are not thrilled with it and try to avoid, diminish and ignore him. This is why I chose the term “exuding God” because it has both of these meanings.
On the one hand, some willingly “radiate, show, display and exhibit” God’s reality in their life, while others – those who are trying to ignore God – still “emit, leak, discharge, ooze, issue, and secrete” God’s reality in their life. No matter how hard they try, God still leaks out!
Radiating God or leaking God, those are the two things I look for when I people watch. It’s one or the other. Either way, we’re either proud of God, or embarrassed by him. So which is it for you?
See you on the plane.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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