By Pastor Don Schatz

Here I Am

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud Link

“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people….”
Ephesians 2:19  New International Version

Some years ago, in the movie, ‘A Walk to Remember,’ the protagonist was a young woman dying of cancer.  One of her wishes was to be in two places at once.  I have never really had that goal.  But recently, in London, I visited the Royal Observatory and straddled the Prime Meridian.  I was in two places at once–the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.

In a real sense, we are in two places at once in our lives in Jesus.  We are not foreigners or aliens, as St. Paul asserted with the Ephesian Christians.  We are fellow citizens with one another in our faith in Jesus, in our citizenship in the Church that is Christ’s.  We live here and now, on earth.  We treasure our planet as God’s marvelous creation.  We enjoy it and care for it.  We embrace the role Adam and Eve first had as stewards of the earth.

At the same time, we are citizens of heaven.  We do not need a passport or visa.  Our citizenship in glory was gained for us by Christ.  We pray, “thy Kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  And we mean it.  Our faith in Christ, his walk with us in our daily lives, meld heaven and earth.  We are restored to the hope of paradise.

Living this way, in two places at once, can bring a contentment we would otherwise never know.  The Blues song ‘Anyhow’ has a refrain: Here I am.  Here You are.  Here we are.  Here we are, the Light of the world.  Here Jesus is, Immanuel, God with us.  Here We are, together.  In two places at once.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado