God Is Near

“Thou art near, O LORD; and all thy commandments are truth.” (Ps 119:151 AV)

 

I, for one, am so grateful for the presence of the LORD, even when I may not be able to fully sense it.  We are busy.  We are occupied with relationships of this world.  We are preoccupied with so many distractions it is hard to keep God at the forefront of one’s minds and hearts.  Yet, God is always near.  We often are comforted by this thought when the issues of life become overwhelming.  We are driven to the presence of God when we are faced with trials too difficult to handle.  But the writer contextualizes the presence of the LORD with commandments. It is the security which His commandments bring that testify of the nearness of God.  David expresses his gratitude for the statutes of God because, without them, he would sense the nearness of God all that less.  The commandments of God are an expression of His character.  They are an extension of His person.  When the writer obeys the commandments, he is personally obeying God.  The commandments of God are as much a part of God as truth.  They are not separate entities apart from God.  They are God.  Therefore, when the writer sees the truth of God’s commandments, he sees God.

My father was a stern man.  Not necessarily in an oppressive way.  There were no grey areas with my father.  You knew exactly where he stood on any given issue or decision.  He laid a solid foundation of principles and rules that governed our lives whether he was personally with us or not.  If we were with our friends, there was no confusion over what my father would expect.  If we were in the woods on a camping trip, it was the survival skills that he taught us that kept us from any serious problems.  Out of eight boys, I think only two of us ever got poison ivy.  Amazing.  We learned how to fall trees and start campfires with little help from artificial fire starters.  We learned first aid in case there was a serious injury.  There were wild plants from which we could snack.  There were boundaries in place to keep us safe.  If there were ever a time we got lost, we all knew how to use a compass and were aware of the general outlay of where we were so that in case we lost our way, we could find our way back.  All these skills we learned from our father.  When we were apart from our father, it was his rules and principles that guided us.  As we get older, and those same rules and principles manifest themselves as we raise our own children, we often hear our spouses remark our behavior is a shadow of our father.  When we are alone and working through something, we apply a principle or rule that Dad had and we cannot help but think that in that principle or rule, our fathers are with us.

When we live according to the commandments of God, He is not a memory of something from the past.  He is there in person.  Even though the commandments are an extension of the character of God, they are a personal expression of His love for creation.  Our earthly fathers were temporal.  They could only be in one place at a time.  Our heavenly Father is omnipresent.  So, unlike our earthly father’s shadow of a voice in the conscience, our heavenly Father is with us no matter where we go.  And, one of the ways we sense Him is in the observation of His law.  Next time we struggle with the presence of God, remember He is always near.  His commandments are one of the ways in which we sense Him.  Like an instructor looking over our shoulder to correct and guide us, our Father is right behind us to prompt us into righteousness and blessing.