The Gift of Presence

I went back to my home town last week. I traced the path I walked to the grade school each day. Unfortunately, my daughter was with me and she discovered that it was not seven miles long nor uphill both ways and there was no place for a wolf to hide. She refused to let me off the hook with, “Well I might have exaggerated the story just a little bit.”

Getting exposed was worth it because I found a certain spot on the sidewalk that has had a profound impact on my life. I have only told this story to a very small group of close friends for fear it would sound as if I had some special experience or special calling from God. I certainly do not think that is so. There is nothing special about me, nor do I have what the TV preachers call an “anointing”. I honestly believe anything God gives or does for one person He will give and do for all of us.

When I was about six years old, I was walking home from school alone. At the spot on the sidewalk I found and stood on last week I suddenly had some kind of an experience that I have always believed was with God. I cannot describe it, but it just felt like I was connected to Him and it felt important. I do not know what to call this experience. This happened a few years before I became a Christian. All I know to say is somehow I felt God’s presence.

I realize saying I felt something is not a strong argument for proving the existence of God, but I am not telling the story to prove anything. I simply want to share what that experience means in my life.

That happened eighty years ago and from that moment until now there has never been a time when I did not have a sense of God’s presence. He has been with me even though being with me took Him a lot of places He probably did not want to go and there were many times when He must have turned His eyes in disappointment and maybe even shame. He stayed with me when there was no reason to do so. He believed in me when there was nothing to believe or hope for. He gave grace when a kick in the rear was far more appropriate. He gave me the gift of His presence and I would like to share some of what that gift has done for me.

GUIDANCE
I have never been very good at knowing God’s will for my life. That has never been a very big problem because there has always been plenty of other folks who seemed to know what God wanted me to do. However, when I look back, I can see the guiding hand of God. I don’t know how He did that. He has never spoken to me and if He did it would scare me half to death. He was not some Jiminy Cricket fussing at Pinocchio. Maybe it was just the sense of His presence or a quiet influx of insight. I don’t think God yells. I think He quietly urges and suggests to the human heart.

That may not sound very dramatic but look at the book of Job. God did not answer a single one of Job’s questions, He just overwhelmed him with His presence, and Job went from wishing he had never been born or that he had died at birth to saying, “I know that my redeemer liveth.” Somehow that seems logical to me.

SELF-WORTH
Ultimately the presence began to feel like acceptance and love which over time helped me to accept and love myself. That was not quick or easy. I spent twenty years of my life thinking I was ugly and so dumb I dare not take any hard courses in high school or college, and actually had a mental block against trying to understand anything complicated or scholarly. I still have a little of that left.

First, I met the love of my life who did not seem to care that I was ugly and dumb, could that have been guidance? And, at the bottom of a tremendous struggle with my faith I discovered that God loved me just like I was, or maybe like I could be. The one basic plank of my belief system is that Jesus did not come into the world to get us to behave, He came here to relate to us and that relating results in our finding self-esteem add self-worth. To me that is the victory in Jesus we sing about.

THE WORTH OF OTHERS
Get ready here comes the heretic part. He made contact with me when I was six years old. At that time, I was not a Baptist nor any other persuasion. I was a six-year-old little boy. I suppose I could have then become anything or could have not joined any group at all. What that means to me is, God can speak to anyone, and we have no idea who He is speaking to today. I have asked many people who are not members of any religious organization if they talk to God inside their own minds, and have been amazed at the large percentage who say they do so. The Muslim, the Jew, the Hindu, The Buddhist, and those who claim no faith…are we really arrogant enough to think that in all the world our little bunch are the only ones God loves or speaks with? I went back and found my spot on the sidewalk to remind me that we can never put God in our little boxes, nor should we ever sing this song as my friend BillyClyde Shields arranged.

“Jesus loves the little children
all the children in the world
JUST AS LONG AS THEY ARE WHITE
they are precious in His sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world”