Reading Brennan Manning's "The Ragamuffin Gospel" yesterday I came across this:

In his book the Magnificent Defeat, Fredrick Buechner writes: "For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists...but that God is right here in the thick of our day-to-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars but in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God's existence that we want but the experience of God's presence.

Later we find out that is really what God wants too:

In dealing with that fact that broken humanity desires justice, but God gives grace, Manning writes:

Justice says: "I owe you nothing for you have broken the contract." But where justice ends, love begins, and reveals that God is not interested merely in the dividends of the covenant. He is looking into the eyes of Israel from his depths to hers. He sees through the smokescreen of deeds good and bad to Israel herself. She glances up uneasily, "Who? Me?" "Yes, you. I don't want the abstractions of relationship. I want your heart."