By Pastor Don Schatz

There All Along

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“Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually.”
Psalm 105:4  New Revised Standard Version

What do you see when you look at today’s picture?  What draws your eye?  Captures your imagination?  Clouds?  Sea?  Snow-capped mountains?  The kiss of pink on the mountaintops from the rising sun?

What about the bird?  What bird?  NO, what about the bird?  Almost off the center-right-hand side of the photograph is a dark spot in the sky.  A seagull.  You likely did not look at the picture to see if there was something difficult to see.  The seagull is easy to miss.  It takes someone to point it out.  Even then, one might have to squint.   It depends on whether or not you are as old as I am!

Here’s where we take a bit of a leap.  But hang in there.  Have you ever looked around the photograph of your life (or motion picture for that matter) to see where the Lord is in your day?  Have you ever given up looking, convinced he wasn’t there?  Have you stopped looking?  Wondered why his presence isn’t more obvious?  Even when a kind friend suggests ways to see the Lord’s presence, you might still have to squint?

“Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually.”  The Psalmist knew the struggle to see the Lord’s presence, to believe that the Lord is present.  Now, that’s not God’s fault.  Just like the seagull, the Lord is always present in our lives.  The analogy breaks down a little because the Lord is bigger in life than the dot of a seagull in the distant sky.  Or is he?  Yes.  And no.  We might not be looking for him.  We might not expect his presence.  Even little issues and struggles can appear so big that they can blot out the truth of the Lord’s presence.

The glasses of faith help us see what might otherwise be unseen–God is with us.  Psalm 77:  “Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen.”  Faith sees.  II Corinthians 4:  “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Take a look around today.  The Lord IS there.

Copyright Family of Christ Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado