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From Dave Tomlinson,Ìýwriter and Vicar of St Luke’s Holloway in London:

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A while back someone gave us a fridge magnet that says, ‘I’ve found Jesus – he was behind the sofa the whole time!’ Some people might find that offensive – not us! Because in its way, the message is perfectly profound: we don’t need to look for God in religious buildings and systems, God’s presence is there all the time: in ordinary everyday life.

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It seems a shame that religious discourse is increasingly left to geeks like me who’ve studied theology or to churchy people. Last week on PfT I talked about ‘Holy Joes’, the church in a pub that I used to run where anyone and everyone could have their say or voice their doubts, enter the conversation. For me, that’s what church should be like.

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Most of us, religious or not, recognise that life is packed with mystery. We sense awe and wonder at the birth of a child or when gazing at a starry night sky, or we call for help in desperate times.

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I once talked to someone who’d gone into a lonely field with a bottle of whisky and a pile of pills, determined to end his pain. But just sitting there, surrounded by the sound of birds, staring at the hillside and feeling the breeze on his face he said, ‘I had this weird sense of invisible arms around me, and something telling me that my miserable life had a purpose.’

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Cut a long story short….he now volunteers with a charity helping people with depression. He didn’t ‘get religion’. I’m not sure he even believes in God. Yet somehow, he discovered that help was ‘behind the sofa the whole time’, that he wasn’t alone.

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I think it’s unlikely that we will ever truly find God in a religious book or system if we can’t discover God’s presence in a rainbow or a blade of grass, in the smile of a child or the pleasure of a meal with friends.

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Religious faith and practices may have their value, yet I believe the essence of religion, of living a meaningful creaturely existence, lies quite simply in paying attention to the wonder of ordinary life, in pausing long enough to be astonished at it, and in sharing the joy with others.

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