“For in him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17: 28
Where is God? –this is no new question. In the long ago Job cried in distress of soul, “O, that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat!” As men of adventurous spirit have sailed the seas to find where the world’s hidden treasures are, so the universal soul of man has ever sought to discover God’s dwelling place. As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth our soul to know where God may be found. The heathen say that he may be found in stocks and stones. The ancient Israelites believed that his spirit dwelt in the Ark of the Covenant between the cherubim. The atheist says that he is found nowhere. In our childish fancies we thought of him as one dwelling in the far-off heavens, and even yet, in manhood’s full estate, we are prone to think of him as a distant God. Because we cannot see him we think that he is far away, hidden in some undiscovered place.
It is not the distance that hides God from our view. The truth is─ wonderful to contemplate─ God is so near that we cannot see him!
“O where is the sea? the fishes cried,
As they swam the crystal waters through;
We have heard from old of the ocean’s tide,
And we long to look on the waters blue.
The wise ones speak of an infinite sea;
O! who can tell if such there be?”
As they swam the crystal waters through;
We have heard from old of the ocean’s tide,
And we long to look on the waters blue.
The wise ones speak of an infinite sea;
O! who can tell if such there be?”
And all the while they are so submerged in the ocean’s tide that they cannot see “the waters blue.” At some happy hour in the soul’s quest for God the truth dawns upon us that creation is aglow with his presence and that verily “in him we live and move and have our being.”
The most real fact in this universe is God. The whole creation bears witness to his presence. The sunlight that floods the earth, the glories of the firmament, night and day, winter and spring, all declare that the Creator is everywhere in his world. The rose that was blooming one morning in my garden, with colors more delicate than the brush of a Turner could paint, told me that the great Artist was there. The laughter of little children, the love of friends, the upward march of the races of men proclaim that God is about us and within us richly imparting his grace. The unsatisfied aspiration of the heart, its pain, its joy, its penitence, its thoughts too deep for words tell us how near God is.
He is so near that no one can overhear him when in the secret places of the soul he speaks. He is so near that he can understand our inmost thoughts before we have given utterance to them. He knows our guilt, our sorrows, our hopes, our unexpressed longings. A friend must be very near to hear us when out of our hearts we whisper to him a secret. God is nearer than that. He alone is near enough to hear us when we think. He is too near to be seen, “guiding every instinct, creating every intuition, vibrating in every emotion, and glowing in every thought.” Wherever we are, there is God. The awakened soul discerns him everywhere and lives and rejoices in him always.
