I mean, it’s so funny. It’s just that I really had to rethink what trust and hope looks like if I’m just living scan to scan. Like, what does it mean to experience – I don’t know – proximity to God or a sense of faithfulness without actually thinking that my life is supposed to be better because of it? Like, I don’t know if a lot of people think this, but at least the hope is, like, if you’re a good Christian or you’re a good anybody that, like, maybe you will somehow get some sort of advantage at least in terms of spiritual enrichment or, you know, life-changing perspective. And in the end, like, I don’t know if there’s really any advantage to (laughter) being spiritual except that you get to know a little something about the presence of God.

Kate Bowler in “A Stage-4 Cancer Patient Shares The Pain And Clarity Of Living ‘Scan-To-Scan’

Kate Bower’s vulnerability blows my mind. She shares intimate details of grappling with mortality — perhaps the scariest and most profound question we ever face — in a way that the universal community of all who grieve and hope and love is opened to us all. I think the presence of God works like that. As a child, I remember singing the words, “The Kingdom of God is in me. The Kingdom of God is here. The Kingdom of God is waiting for the King to reappear. Reappear.” I took that to mean, God is love — and — God is here. That understanding has been tested, and morphed, and grown, and crept, and wailed, and sang as I have lived my church choir teachings time and time again. (Eventually, after a lot of life, I came to learn that the King’s reappearance was up to us as we are asked to be love in this world.) About the same time as I learned that the Kingdom of God is in me, I learned about the universal priesthood of all believers. (This put a sacred responsibility top spin on the ball of life.) After that, I learned about the concept original grace. (Which in many ways is life’s whole ball game. We are all born into the loving grace of God. Regardless. Period.)

Looking at all that through the lens of Bowler’s expansive, soft, loving understanding of God’s presence makes sense to me. We all live a scan-to-scan life as our lives fall apart and back together, again and again. If a scan-to-scan life is defined as making a life in the midst of sickness, health, sadness, happiness, anxiety, peace, suffering, and joy, then (to varying degrees, at different times, and in a million different ways) we all live scan-to-scan lives. Perhaps knowing that we are all together, thirsty for explanations and answers and solutions and fixes and certainty, is what it means to be in the presence of God. The presence of God is a brick-by-brick, breath-in and breathe-out, scan-to-scan journey.