“The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them. The Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. Psalm 145:18-20
I have a fire pit a good distance from my house, tucked in among some willows. My kids and I enjoy evenings sitting and poking at the fire while we stare up at the night sky. We behold a sky filled with stars hung in their designated place above our heads. We marvel at the immensity of this nightly presentation of creation. Occasionally, there will be an unnatural light that crosses our sky. A blinking light of an airplane will go streaking through the darkness toward some unknown destination.
I wonder about those on-board those planes. Seats full of passengers all with destinations. They are either traveling away from families or returning. They all have stories with intrigue, conflicts, loves, hopes and dreams. They all have beliefs, ethnicities, and philosophies by which they govern their lives in a complicated world. They are engaged in conversations, reading books, listening to music, day-dreaming, sleeping or an assortment of other activities intended to occupy their time as the pass through my night sky.
They race through my sky merely as a blinking light to indicate their passage. They are oblivious to me as I sit far below by my little fire. They cannot know that I have spied them. They cannot know that I wonder about them. They cannot know the lives that are going on below them. They cannot know me.
We slip pass each other without knowledge and only scant awareness. Neither those in the airplane nor me at my fire can close the distance between us. Neither of us have the power to make ourselves known. Neither of us can affect each other’s desire. Neither of us can preserve the other’s lives. We are strangers destined to remain.
My eye is drawn beyond the tiny blinking light to the expanse of the universe. I know that He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning and darkens the day into night is out there. I know that the Lord is his name. (Amos 5:8) I spin around on a tiny planet, as a microscopic blip of a light spot in an immense universe, before the eye of the God of hosts. I go past him just as that airplane passes above me.
Fortunately, all the parties of this spiritual separation are not as powerless as those in the temporal. I am as incapable of knowing Him, whose face I can glimpse in the stars, as those in that airplane are capable of knowing the man sitting beside this little campfire. He who forms the mountains and creates the wind has the power to declare to me His thoughts. (Amos 4:13)
He has the power to close the gap that separates the created from the Creator. He has the power to know my desires and to fulfill them. He has the power to hear my anguish and to heal me. He has the power to preserve me – a microscopic blip of a life, spinning on a minuscule planet, in an insignificant galaxy.
I know Him because He has made Himself known to me.
I call upon Him from His gift of faith to know the Truth.
I fear Him through eyes He has opened to His greatness.
I cry out to Him because He draws near to me.
I love Him from a heart that knows Him and all He does.
I praise Him through a transformed life in glory to him.
Prepare to meet your God!
Seek Him and He will draw near to you.
Seek Him and He will open your eyes.
Seek Him and live!
The Lord, the God of hosts is his name!
PRAYER: O Lord, your name is great and greatly to be praised. Thank you for making yourself known. Thank you for closing a gap that I could never span. Thank you for speaking Truth into my life and calling me to your Son. Hear my voice of praise – you fill all of the earth; you fill all the heavens. Nothing can contain You. Nothing is beyond your reach. You are the most high – you are the Lord, the God of hosts. I behold your name and cherish you my Lord. You are High and Lifted Up! I pray this in the precious name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
A DEVOTED LIFE 