“For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end.”
Psalm 48: 14 NIV
While God is in every moment, He is not a momentary God. He is not a one stop convenience store with quick fixes for those oh-oh moments when we mess up and need someone to bail us out. He is the God who set our world in motion, giving us the sky and the sea; the sun and the moon. He is the God who created us. He is the God of our fathers and grandfathers. From generation to generation He has been with us.
What is different today is us, not Him. He is the constant. We are the variable. It is we who have chosen to put Him on a shelf, to be called on only in times of extreme distress. It is we who have decided that our time is better spent on the business of acquiring money and things rather than being still in His presence. We have forgotten how to be quiet and listen for His voice in this noisy, technology filled world.
And where has that gotten us? We are a nation in trouble, a people lost in the wilderness. We no longer put God and His ways first. It’s all about us, and in our selfishness we are the ones who have caused the emptiness we feel inside. We have lost our first love, divorced ourselves from the One who promised never to leave us nor forsake us.
But it doesn’t have to end like this. He is there, waiting for us to see that we chose this path, and it hasn’t made us happy. Thank God for His patience. We came from a place of closeness with Him and we can go back to that place. Back to the relationship that once filled us with love, peace and contentment. We can choose to turn around and run back to His loving arms.
He is there. He has not moved. He has not changed. He is our fortress, our citadel, our place of safety and security in this uncertain world. He will be there “even to the end.” Whether that “end” is Christ’s return to claim His children, or our crossing the crevasse between this life and eternity, our time to choose Him or reject Him will someday be over. There was a song that was popular in the 70’s; “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.” The lyrics, in part state:
Life was filled with guns and war
and everyone got trampled on the floor
I wish we’d all been ready
Children died the days grew cold
a piece of bread could buy a bag of gold
I wish we’d all been ready
There’s no time to change your mind
The son has come and you’ve been left behind
Which path will we choose; the one of emotional and spiritual wellbeing or the one of struggle and loneliness?
Father, forgive us for our stubbornness, our selfishness. Help us to see you are only a request away. We only need to call on the Name above all names, Jesus.