meet me in Paris

Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?

-Psalm 139:7

Today marks one month of my Parisian adventure. Although I have mostly felt at home here, I’ve felt like I’ve been missing something. You know that feeling you get when you’re sure you’ve forgotten something but you can’t quite put your finger on it? Well, I realized that I “left” God under my pillow in my room in New Jersey (well, that’s how I felt at least).

As with all new places, there are things that I haven’t really liked about Paris – one of them being the constant and consistent rain. The day I arrived, the city gave me an awfully wet welcome (merci, Paris. It was fun lugging around seventy pounds of stuff in the rain), and it has rained almost every day since I’ve been here. I also like playing a game of “dodgeball” with the puffs of cigarette smoke constantly trying to smack me in the face (I usually end up losing because, at every turn, someone is smoking).  While the rain and smoke had been generally persistent, my intimacy with God had been completely irregular, if not non-existent, and this time, it wasn't fault. I was sure of it.

“Father, meet me here,” I’d been asking daily. Just like the fast-paced, poker-faced Parisians, I thought God was too busy to give me even a second of His time. “Why isn’t He meeting me here?” Was it a language barrier? Now that I was suddenly speaking French most of the time, reading French books, and starting to think in French, did my Heavenly Father not understand me? I was sure that God was multi-lingual, but maybe He just didn’t take time to learn French. Or maybe I had overstuffed my suitcase with clothes, shoes, and knick-knacks, so much so that there was not enough room for Him. I had brought both my Bibles though. I had even packed three blank 120-page journals for my quiet time with Him! There was so much space on those blank pages for Him to fill, why wasn’t He showing up?

Two days ago, the weather changed. No, it didn’t get sunnier. In fact, it started to snow! Although I was glad that I had escaped the harsh snowy weather in the north-east region of the USA, I missed looking out the window and seeing soft snow flurries, something that counterintuitively made me feel warm. Yesterday, as I was walking home from school in the snow, I encountered God and was overcome with a joy so overwhelming that I almost cried in the street. I was looking down (which you should do in Paris to avoid stepping in dog poop) when suddenly, I heard a whisper of the words “Comme la neige, Je suis là”, a French phrase which translates to, “Just like the snow, I am here.”

Not only did I feel His presence, I could see it. When I looked up, I saw that there was snowfall in every area visible to me, obviously. In this intimate moment between Him and I, I realized that He is here and at the same time, He is there. He is in the USA, in France, and in Zimbabwe. As I came to an almost full stop in the middle of the pavement, mind blown by this “revelation”, I noticed individual snow flurries gently floating, falling, and clinging to a man’s scarf. At the same time, individual snow flurries were gently floating, falling, and clinging to my scarf. As much as God was and is with that man, He was and is also with me. The snow wasn’t just attaching itself to this man's clothing, it was sticking onto every single person’s clothing, hair, shoes etc. It was everywhere and so was He. It wasn’t God who needed to meet me in Paris, it was I who needed to meet Him. I needed to see and feel Him as I had experienced the snow on that day.

I couldn’t figure out why, in the city of the rendez-vous, God wasn’t meeting me. At every corner, there were people sitting at café’s, having a good laugh (or probably debating aggressively, as the French often do), and enjoying fellowship with one another. All I wanted was for God to meet me, not just in a café, but on my way to school, or while I was doing my grocery shopping. How could he have met me while I was meeting with thoughts of homework, budgets, the Eiffel Tower (which I haven’t fully seen yet), and how much I hate that Parisians smoke so much? One thing that I’ve learned over the years is that God will never impose Himself on people. Because I was in other meetings, there was no way He could’ve met with me. He's too polite. His agenda was always clear; it was I who had to make time to meet with Him.

God isn’t limited by space, time or even language but I am guilty of putting Him in a box built with human restrictions. It’s easy to feel like He is under a pillow far away, or He has earplugs in and can’t hear you. But before you accuse Him of missing your meeting, evaluate your thoughts, re-evaluate them, and then you will probably find that it’s you who is hiding subconsciously. He is omnipresent. It was on that snowy Tuesday, with a clear calendar and a clear mind, that I asked God to meet me in Paris and He did.

God truly loves you.

With love,

Mandile.