Ninety-three million miles. So distant is the sun from the earth, from me. On a brilliant winter day, the sun streams in bright benediction inviting you to forget the chill outside and enjoy its presence. This day, this moment, nothing presses, at least not with unrelenting urgency, and so you do. Basking in the light, its radiant heat soaks through your skin to your very bones in a relaxing and gentle massage.
Time seems to stop as you daydream or even doze, content and at peace. Suddenly a chill startles you. Even though the room was comfortably warm just moments ago, now an unpleasant coolness creeps over you. The window is no longer filled with the sun’s light and the shadow of its absence is shockingly cold. The sun has moved on and no longer shines fully on you even though the light of day still illumines the room.
But wait! The sun does not move! At least not around the earth. It is the world itself that is hurtling through space, carrying you with it, carrying you away from the beneficent light.
A day comes, a moment comes when you shut the door on the unrelenting, urgent demands on your time. Perhaps it is a Sunday morning at church. Perhaps it’s a weekday as one load is in the washer and the other in the dryer still tumbling damply. Or it’s noon and you’re eating your lunch in the parking lot. You hear in the sudden pause the invitation to sit while in the presence of the Father. And you do.
The time of prayer is sweet and you are rewarded by the knowledge of His presence. For once, you lose yourself in worship and enter the timeless place before the throne of grace. How long? A moment; half an eternity; who knows? But suddenly a shadow strikes a chill that reaches deep into your heart. He is gone! No. He is not gone. His mercy, grace and lovingkindness still illumine your life. But time and the world have carried you out of that timeless moment of communion and earth reasserts its clammy presence.
The world will do that – sit idle upon the face of the world and it will carry you, first out of the radiance of His presence and eventually even out of the general illumination of His daily grace into darkness. So to abide in God’s presence we must be moving, moving against the rotation of the world – like walking upwards on a down escalator. Pause in our walk and the world sweeps us away.
It is an impossible task, this abiding in the presence of God. Impossible, that is, in our own strength. For we grow weary and sink to the earth in search of rest. But we are not alone. The Holy Spirit lives within the child of God. He gives us power and endurance to follow our Shepherd and King. And He is faithful to lead us to that day when we, once for all, enter into His rest, gazing with adoration, fully, into the eyes and glorious countenance of our God for all eternity.
Kathy Kexel 