Good Morning All!
Proverbs 18:24; “A man of many companions
may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
One of the fascinating side impacts of the
coronavirus pandemic was the rise in tele-working or communicating. We use Facebook to show our worship services
and we use a website called “Zoom” to teach classes or even have counseling
sessions and meetings. Zoom is a two-way
visual communication through the internet.
If you remember the TV-telephone from the “Jetsons” that is pretty much
what it is. It is amazing how we can
stay in contact with each other anymore.
I think back to when I was in high school
and college; if you wanted to be in contact you either wrote a letter or made a
long-distanced phone call, which was expense.
If you mailed a letter, you waited until the other person got it and
then waited for them to write back. It
was difficult to keep in touch and we often felt as if the friendship or the
family was drifting apart a little. You felt
like you were farther away than you wanted to be.
Sometimes, we feel that way about
God. Sometimes, it feels like He is a long
way away and not answering his mail very fast (or his phone battery is
dead). Most of us know those times. A family member is lying there close to
death, we have a lot we want to say but do not know how. We wonder where God is; is he listening at
all? We are finally getting things to
feel like they are going smoothly; then the car dies and how do we afford a
different one. We finally find the
perfect job and our spouse gets transferred to a different town, now what, God
are you listening at all? The neighbor
kid who went off to join the army just came home without any legs, how can this
happen?
Sometimes it seems that we are all alone
and the weight of the whole world is on our shoulders. It can even seem like all our friends are no
longer around to even care let alone help us.
Even though it does not seem like it, God is still there holding us
close, closer than anyone. We still live
in a sinful world; bad things happen even to God’s children. The difference is that we know that God is
still there to comfort us and to console us and to give us courage to give us
hope. We live with the hope of the
resurrection. We live with the hope of
eternal life. We live with the certainty
that we will be re-united with our loved ones and all the faithful who will
gather at the throne of grace to celebrate the feast that will never end.
Along with that promise, God has given us
a family that will love us and comfort us with hugs and shared tears. We still grieve at death, but we grieve as
one who knows that soon we will all gather together in heaven. God may feel like he is far away but he
really is not that is just our sinful nature trying to drive us away from God
so the devil can torment us. Yet God is
holding us close standing with us closer than any friend or brother ever can.
We can, and are, always in contact with
God. He is as close as your Bible and
your prayers. We can read what God
reveals to us and he will listen to your prayers. The Spirit will bring you peace, the kind of
peace that only God can bring.
Dear Father, we rest in your loving arms. In your mercy we find rest. Protect us from the devil and his ways and
give us that sense of hope and comfort that we can only receive from you. In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen,
God’s Peace,
Pastor Bret
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