THE HIDDEN ROOT OF BEING

THE HIDDEN ROOT OF BEING

The world appears solid

until sorrow passes through it.

Then suddenly,

the towers tremble,

the proud voices crack,

the glittering surfaces reveal their fractures,

and humanity remembers

how little it truly controls.

We spend our lives touching appearances—

naming objects,

measuring distances,

counting wealth,

building systems strong enough

to make us forget death for a while.

Yet beneath every visible thing

there remains an unseen root.

A hidden depth

from which meaning rises

like water from underground springs.

The eye cannot fully reach it.

The hand cannot fully grasp it.

The machine cannot reproduce it.

And language itself grows thin

standing before it.

For existence is more than survival.

More than movement.

More than matter arranged in temporary form.

There is a pulse beneath creation

that no instrument can detect.

The trembling of conscience.

The ache for eternity.

The hunger for mercy.

The longing to be known

beyond utility,

beyond performance,

beyond fear.

And when the noise of the world grows quiet,

when the soul becomes still enough

to hear what power tries to drown out,

the Eternal Presence waits there—

beneath thought,

beneath time,

beneath the divided fragments of existence—

like roots hidden beneath a forest,

holding together what storms cannot destroy.

This is why humanity cannot live by possession alone.

Why truth survives imprisonment.

Why love outlives empires.

Why mercy still appears

in the ruins of history.

The hidden root of being

is not force.

It is Presence.

And every living thing,

whether it knows it or not,

is reaching toward the One

from whom all existence quietly grows. 

Pastor Steven G. Lee 

St. GMC Corps

May 6, 2026