God is Here
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
Isaiah 40:21
Sometimes a thing is so obvious, too obvious, that we don’t notice it. The prophet Isaiah reminds us of the one simple truth that underlies all of our existence.
God made this.
Genesis 1 starts out “In the Beginning, God”
John 1 starts out “In the beginning, the Word”
In the beginning, God was already there. From the foundations of the earth, knitting us together in our mother’s wombs, God has always been there. Through floods and fires, God has been there. Through plagues and wars, God has been there. At the crucifixion, when Christians were fed to the lions and hung on crosses, God was there. Through crusades, and darkness, God was there. Through wars of religion and division, through the spanish flu, all the way up to the present day, God was there.
And God is here now.
As your (and my) frustrations rise over human error around vaccine distribution and disease management and mask adoption — we should heed Isaiah’s reminder that God is here. God hears our cries, shares in our frustration and anxiousness, and wishes for us all to be whole and together soon.
If we are patient, if we are prayerful, If we listen and discern to what God is calling us towards — God will provide.
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.
In 2017 when we started talking about racism and the Church, there was no agenda. Though we all had human inclinations to ‘fix it’ — as a body we were patient, prayerful and discerning. We listened to God’s still small voice, we heard the cries of ancestors in the stillness of our own hearts, and we noticed the fissures and cracks in our own hearts.
So when we finally moved towards reparations, we did so understanding God’s place in that work, and our role as well. It doesn’t mean it will be easy! But it does mean we are clear that Jesus is walking with us in this work.
What other parts of our lives could we slow down in? Listen? Pray? Wait? Hope?
Where else do we need God’s clear presence in our lives?
Perhaps as we struggle to find our way in a post-COVID world, a we figure out how to re-open, to prioritize our schedules, and wait for vaccines, we can do some prayerful consideration of where is Jesus in this moment and how do we go about following him.
Because this is God’s world. We just live here.