The God Who Shows Up in Convenience Stores at 2 AM

"Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?" - Psalm 139:7 (NASB)

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as I stood in the cereal aisle at 2:17 AM, unable to sleep again, wandering the aisles of a 24-hour grocery store like some kind of insomniac pilgrim. Three months into what I euphemistically called my "spiritual hiatus," I'd given up looking for God in traditional places.

But there, between the Lucky Charms and the store-brand cornflakes, something shifted. Maybe it was the kindness in the tired cashier's eyes when she didn't judge my odd-hour shopping trip. Maybe it was the realization that even here, especially here, I wasn't alone.

We've been sold this idea that God only inhabits stained glass and organ music, that divine encounters require proper posture and perfect circumstances. But what if the psalmist knew something we've forgotten? What if there truly is nowhere—not even the fluorescent-lit aisles of our 2 AM wanderings—where we can flee from divine presence?

Thomas Merton observed, "There is in all things an inexhaustible mystery." That mystery doesn't disappear when we stop attending services or reading our Bibles. It doesn't evaporate when we question everything we once believed without doubt.

Sometimes the most honest prayers happen in convenience stores. Sometimes the deepest spiritual conversations occur with the stranger bagging your groceries. Sometimes the presence of God feels more real in the authentic messiness of a midnight crisis than in the carefully orchestrated moments we've labeled "worship."

This isn't about abandoning community or dismissing the value of gathered worship. It's about recognizing that your spiritual life isn't confined to Sunday mornings or small group discussions. The God who "neither slumbers nor sleeps" is with you in your insomnia, in your restless wandering, in your 2 AM existential questions.

You don't have to clean up your spiritual life to encounter the divine. You don't have to figure out your theology before you can experience grace. Sometimes God shows up most clearly when we've stopped looking so hard—when we're just trying to buy milk and find ourselves face-to-face with mystery in the most ordinary moments.

The next time you find yourself spiritually displaced, remember: you haven't wandered beyond the reach of love. You've simply discovered that love has a much larger geography than you imagined.