RIGHT where we
are, there God is.
Right in our
midst — in the struggles and the strains — there our Lord is. He is present. He
has promised to never leave us nor forsake us. God is not in the practice of
foreclosing on his promises. Where he has promised to be is filled with his
goodness.
And it’s there
we find our place of reality — in the liminal space — of our momentary
situation. With all its problems.
Bringing two
cosmoses together — the fact of God’s Presence, and the existential issue of
our problematic realities — we have a dichotomy. Is God’s Presence so impotent
to not regard our situations and not solve them?
When we think
that God exists to bless us we come at God from the wrong direction.
Yet, it is true
that if we are to be blessed it will occur right where we are.
Where God is
present, where God has a role as witness and Lord over our circumstances, we
can assume one thing with great assurance: it
is God’s will that we wrestle with the truth of our circumstances so as to
accept those truths in order to be set free. (Read John 8:31-32 in this
way.)
What are we
being set free from?
From the shock
of how life is. From the anger that hijacks our peace. From the lies of
bargaining a way out of our own life. From the lack of resilience against which
depression would detain us in prevailing weakness.
We are only set
free when we abide in Jesus (verse 31 of John 8) — which is to be a disciple of
him and his teaching. Such an abiding is a wrestling with apparent dichotomies
where there is no ‘pat’ answer that bears the name, “truth.”
***
Jesus sets us
free when we accept the truth embedded in our current realities.
We are set free
from anxiety, idealism, grief, and an external locus of control, not to name
many others.
Only as we
accept where God has us are we able to receive the good news: blessing is at
hand.
Behold, God is
in our midst! Look, through our eyes! Feel, breath enter our lungs!
Just three there
are above in an infinite range of gifts that God rolls out to us every day.
Now we meet two
present realities that collide every moment: God is present everywhere and his
blessing is all around.
© 2015 S. J. Wickham.
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