God's Presence

              In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” (Luke 1:26-28)

             When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” (Judges 6:12)

             Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

            “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.

            “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”  (Acts 9:1-6)

 

            I wrote about Gideon’s encounter with an angel not long ago, but Mary’s encounter was the day's verse on BibleGateway.com. As we’re considering 2023 and getting ready for what it brings us, it seems reasonable to look at patterns we find in Scripture. One of those patterns is that their lives are thrown into upheaval when they encounter a spiritual being. People find themselves in what might be considered the worst possible circumstances, and they’re praised for it.

Mary was a virgin, engaged to a good man, and the angel tells her she’s going to be pregnant, and Joseph isn’t the father. Gideon is told he will go fight the people who conquered his homeland. Saul (Paul) is told that the One he’s been fighting is the One he claimed to praise and will preach in favor of what he was on record as violently opposing. Could it get any worse?

    Or, think of Abram and Sarai, who were told to leave their hometown for some unknown land that would be theirs. Or Joseph, who wound up a slave in another foreign land when God got involved in his life. Or Job. Or Saul. Or David. Or Daniel, Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego. Or any of the prophets. The pattern is clear. When God got involved in their lives, their lives got complicated, disrupted, and unpredictable.

            We must pause for long enough to clarify – God is always involved in everyone’s lives. He’s omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and loving. He could no more not be involved than you or I can become the Loch Ness monster. But while there is a level of activity that makes “normal” life possible, it’s a lesser involvement that doesn’t tend to involve our conscious thoughts. Involved in…lives is a deeper, more intrusive thing, the consequences we tend to notice.

            Those consequences are the complications, disruptions, and unpredictability previously mentioned. And herein lies our difficulty. We often pray seeking God’s presence in our lives, and in the next breath, pray that God would use that presence to take away our struggles. There’s a nice parallel to this in dealing with dogs. We call a dog to us, then bend over it to pet it. The problem is that bending over a dog's head is – in dog-speak – a dominance maneuver telling them to go away. We don’t tend to realize what we are saying and doing contradicts what we claim we want.

So, if we seek to have God in our lives in 2023, we would be wise to prepare for life to be “smooth sailing” and settled.