Is God everywhere? Is he in every leaf of every tree? Does he permeate the cosmos with his being? Is he in every blade of grass? Well, yes and no. God is in every blade of grass in the same way I am in a transceiver I built years ago and later sold. You might even find some of my DNA in that radio, because I got a little careless with my tools. But I am not there. I am here. God is in every blade of grass in the same way my wife is in the little painting she did years ago when we were playing with oils. But if you think you can put your foot on God when you walk across the grass, you are badly mistaken.

It may be a new Deism. God created all this, but left immediately and has no further interest in what he made. It is a silly idea on its face, but what lies behind it? I think there is a simple fear of acknowledging the reality of a personal God. Because a personal God will have ideas. He will have preferences. He may even have demands. He may expect things of us that we don’t want to do. He may have standards we don’t want to live up to. But hiding your face from God won’t make him go away.

God knew that we would then invent a god for ourselves who is an impersonal, cosmic force—a God who is everywhere and nowhere at the same time; because an impersonal god would not make any demands on how we live our lives. Knowing this would happen, God took steps to ensure that men could know that he is personal.