God from a Distance

 

Pluto:  Photo courtesy of NASA's New Horizon Probe

Psalm 139:7,8a

Where can I go from Your Spirit,

Where can I flee from Your presence?

If I ascend to the heavens, You are there...

Recently, I have often felt far away from God. I haven't been going through anything that difficult or anything life-threatening.  I can't point to one thing to explain my episodic sense of spiritual isolation. Furthermore, I know the character of God. I have experienced His love and His power and His presence in real time. However, recently, those times are few and far between. 

In sum, God has often felt far away...

Then, a few weeks ago, I saw the above picture taken by the New Horizons space probe on a fly-by of Pluto over 2 billion miles from earth revealing a landscape that is over 300 degrees below zero.  And in that cold, dark piece of space, New Horizons sent back this picture of Pluto with it's gigantic heart-shaped shelf of ice over 1000 miles wide!

In that moment, God gently said to me, "Where can you go, Geoff, from My Spirit and where can you flee, my favored one, from My presence?" God reminded me in that picture of Pluto that it is precisely in those cold and dark places of life, when it seems like God is far away, that He is actually right there with us revealing to us another dimension of His love...

And not just me...but remember Moses?  How many times had he walked by that same bush before it became a beacon of eternal light? How many times had Moses walked that dusty trail before the sand transformed under his toes to holy ground?

And how long was Gideon hiding in the winepress before that supernatural encounter that transformed his life and saved the lives of his people?

And I wonder why Jesus chose a little boring hill to transfigure into radiant glory?

It is when our lives seem dusty and the way before us seems monotonous and unremarkable, it is when we are afraid, and it is when we are cold and in the dark, that we discover that the heart of God still beats for His people. 

I have thought a lot about this picture from the New Horizons probe the last couple of weeks. And I am beginning to look at things differently in the very parts of my life that I haven't seen evidence of God's presence because now I know it is in those places that God has shown up again and again for His people, not because He has to, but because there is nowhere that we can go from the heart of God...just ask those weary shepherds who one dark night, were serenaded by a host of angels and found a king lying in bed of straw.

Less doing. More being.

Reading: I have read a few Cantos of, "The Faerie Queene." (I think it is mostly in English)

Movie: Sheep Detectives (So fun!)

Music: If I Could Walk on Water (Eddie Money)