By Judy Villanueva

Zephaniah 3:17                                                                                                                                                   The Lord your God is in your midst, A victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.

Psalm 73:26                                                                                                                                                            My flesh and my heart may fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Sitting on the deck overlooking a vista that stretches out for miles, I found myself a witness to declarations of emerald green, sage and hints of autumn yellow.  In those spacious moments, with only the wind and a sweet black lab to keep me company, I felt the reality of God surround me.  It’s always there, I know, but I tend to get lost in the here and now of my life and, too often, lose hold of the Divine Presence that offers me its consolations of love every minute of every day.  With beauty His backdrop, the Eternal, Immortal, Invisible God intruded on my temporal reality and offered me a gift of peace. Himself!

Have you ever noticed that life is always an integration of the temporal and eternal?  Our present, physical circumstances and the Kingdom of God in our midst! In other words, we live in two realities all the time.  One that we can see and touch, and the other, Invisible —

Loved, watched over, purposed and protected, always the Beautiful Reality next to us, even when we cannot see or feel it.

Stressors and joys, wins and losses, births and deaths happen in the context of God’s sovereignty.  That’s HUGE because the Reality that God holds all of life all the time wants to ignite faith, refresh hope and become a place of peace in our midst.

When trials come, it is easy to live disintegrated and narrowed to experiencing life in the temporal.  Worry likes to pound its fist and insist we define reality strictly by what we can see and know.

But any perspective void of the God in our midst will confine the soul and cut off hope.

I want the Truth of God, wise and powerful, kind and good, “over, above, in and through,” to infuse my days with drips of eternity!  I want the Divine to break in and declare that God is always with me and that my life isn’t just about my life.  It is about a victorious warrior who is building a Kingdom right in the middle of my “here and nows.”  He is the God in our midst who rejoices over us and breaks into our temporal realities with declarations of emerald green, shouts of joy, and a gift of peace.  Himself!

“Thank you, Father, that you are the God in our midst!  Awaken me to this reality, and help me enter into your good company today.  For your exultations of joy and quiet love, that you rejoice and shout joy over me, thank you!  Amen.”

How about you?

How do you pull the reality of God into your day-to-day life?

Do you need to remember that God is with you?

Are you “intrudible”? Or, does “busy” keep you from noticing God in your midst?

When was the last time you felt the reality of God surround you?

Knowing God and spending time in His Word renews our minds, refreshes our faith and helps us experience His Heart.

Worship