...never, never alone

There’s not a plant or flower below, but makes Thy glories known;

and clouds arise, and tempests blow, by order from Thy throne;

while all that borrows life from Thee is ever in Thy care,

and everywhere that we can be, Thou, God, art present there.

---Isaac Watts, 1715

The signs are all around. They are in the breeze, underfoot. In messages writ large and small, we are reminded that we don’t make our way through this life unaccompanied. Power and tenderness, delicacy and strength, stillness and motion---God’s presence is felt in myriad ways, in every place and time, in ways we desperately seek and in ways discovered as serendipitous gift.

The Psalmist relates it this way:

            Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?

            If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

            If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around me become night,’

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

            ---Psalm 139: 7-12

Sisters and brothers, we are never. never. alone. And it is not our job to bind God to us some way.

Erasmus said, ‘Bidden or not bidden, God is present.’ Hear the good news, and rest assured.