Larry Fleet a year or two ago released a song titled, “Where
I Find God”. The song journeys through a number of settings as varied as a bar
stool and a church pew, all the way to a deer stand in a hay field. The point
of the song is that a faith filled experience can come to people in many ways
and at different times.

When I think to myself of my faith development, I don’t
necessarily think about church/attending mass or the Bible. I think about
experiences in life and stories that made the miraculous real. The 1917 apparition of the Virgin Mary at Fatima in Portugal was an event that
captivated me in catechism class when I was six or seven. The story is
remarkable and was recent enough to still have living witnesses to the event at
the time I first came to know about the event (1990). In sort, the Virgin Mary
appeared to three children in Portugal and then on her last appearance she makes
the sun dance in the sky (Miracle of the Sun) in front of a group of over
30,000 onlookers, which causes all the people there to completely freak out.  Wouldn’t you if you saw the song moving in
the sky and moving closer to the earth?

That story communicated more to me than I can even fathom,
even today. It told me things about God and faith that were easy to understand
to my 6 or 7 year old mind. God is real and all powerful, the story of Jesus is
real, his mother Mary is real, God speaks to all, and the signs/miracles we
read about in the Bible are not some far removed happenings from a time
thousands of years removed from the present.

In examining my memory, that’s where I trace back to
‘finding God’. I’m sure other people have been moved to faith from the events
at Fatima over a hundred years ago, but that’s only one avenue in a plethora of streets leading to the development of faith.

Larry Feet’s song is wisdom for the ages. We all have
‘found’ God in ways that are as varied and numerous as us.