“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – Mark 15:34
I’ve been thinking today about the omnipresence of God. It is fascinating to consider that God has no boundaries of time or place. Whatever happens, he is there. Whenever it happens and wherever it happens, he is there.
When Jesus Christ called out to the Father in agony, the Father was indeed there, deeply grieved, and yet filled with the identical passion for sinful human beings that compelled Jesus to that horrible place and time.
God is not aging on a timeline as we are. He exists apart from time. He is continually past, present and future. That means that he was there with the crucifiers and the crucified, and--as mysterious as it seems--he is still there, just as much as he is here today, and also there tomorrow.
The humiliation of the cross and the joy of the resurrection both remain present in the mind of God. These are not memories to him. They are not notes in a diary. To the Omnipresent God, death and resurrection are real, current, and visible to him now as me typing at my computer.
Scripture tells us that the promises of God are everlasting. Have you ever wondered how that can be true? Consider his omnipresence and you’ll recognize that each promise is as fresh in the mind of God as if he is just conceiving it now. In a sense, he is. As the poet wrote in the book of Lamentations, “the Lord’s mercies are new every morning.”
The promise of Easter is that God is ever with us. Jesus, uniquely conceived by the omnipresence of God to be fully God and fully man, lived as we all live, died as we all will die. Yet Jesus picked his life back up again as only God can, and walked out of his grave to be our ongoing hope of life, salvation and victory over the quagmire of sinful arrogance, violence, and ignorance that was on full display on the day he was crucified.
This is the Easter of COVID-19. Some might look at all that is going on and, as far as the organized religion goes, all that is NOT going on and wonder where God is. The obvious answer is that he is here, quite present in all our lives.
He was present at the wet market in China when this virus was unleashed, grieving for the death to follow, yet passionate in his love for everyone there. He is already present in the story of this pandemic playing out. He is present in the ending. He sees it as if it is happening right now.
Some might ask—does God ever change his mind? I will let theologians debate that one, but of the following, I am absolutely certain. As we become increasingly aware of God and draw closer to him through knowledge of and faith in Jesus Christ, it is our minds that are changed. We begin to look at past failures and successes and interpret them differently. We look at our future and find unexpected confidence that he is there, whatever comes about. We also look at our current circumstances from a changing perspective, as someone walking with Jesus who says to us, “take courage, I have overcome the world.”
I can’t experience an Easter season without thinking at least a little about my own death. I know it is coming. I read something recently that said if you look at the average life span as a 24-hour clock, then I’m writing this at about 10:45 PM. Maybe later. I take courage. He’s already seen Midnight. He’s already there.
Though we don’t know what is going to happen to any of us tomorrow, or even this afternoon, we can have every confidence that we are not alone. Our Lord is walking with us here and waiting for us there.
Our role is simply to make our way through hour by hour, guided by the knowledge that we are surrounded by his presence. The reality of the resurrected Jesus Christ gives us confidence this is so.
Easter, 2020
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