I witnessed a scene in a restaurant that reminded me of an incident from my childhood. A dad and mom had come in with two small children. The young father went on a scouting expedition to find a high chair. His little boy looked around for his daddy and not seeing him, began to cry. His dad had disappeared and the little guy was inconsolable.
I remembered the feeling. Once my mother and I were separated in a crowded department store and I panicked! I felt alone in the universe. It was scary.
There are times in our lives when we feel a sense of spiritual loneliness, like frightened children. We try to mask our fears and salve our hurting hearts with superficial talk, religious cliches, or mind-numbing entertainments. We sometimes forget that God is a living presence in our everyday lives.
The Bible says that God will be active in the future in a decisive way. Christians believe in the second coming of Jesus Christ. We are taught to pray for his kingdom to come.
We read with faith what the Bible says about God’s great acts in the past. We believe in God’s interventions in the history of Israel and of the holy apostles of the early church. These stories amaze us but we secretly suspect that those people were somehow different and God does not show himself today. As a result we feel spiritually lonely, like lost children.
The answer is to remember and believe that the God of the past and future is also the God of the present. He is the God who said to Joshua, “Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you” (Joshua 1:5). The God of ancient Israel and the God of the early Christians is also our God. He wants us to believe him when he tells us, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).
When I, as a young child, cried out for my mother in that strange and crowded place, she reappeared. She had never left me. I didn’t see her for a moment, but she had never taken her eye off me. She was there.
When you and I grasp the truth of the timelessness and eternal compassion of God, we will, in the words of A.W. Tozer, “begin to think of him as always being there.”
in troubled times, when we need to feel his presence, we may call out to him. He will be there. We may “know God with a vital awareness that goes beyond words” as we live in the intimacy of personal communion with him.
It is the sense of Someone there.
Pastor Randy Faulkner