Is God Everywhere All the Time?

⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me  

   and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

(Psalm 139:1-9 NIV)

I imagine David in a good place when he wrote this. Maybe he'd just laid Absalom down after Maacah had nursed him. He was looking at his tiny mouth still moving in sucking motion, and his tiny little fists all curled up with 5 perfect fingers on each hand complete with 10 perfect tiny fingernails. David might have wondered at the miracle of birth and life and that the God who does all that, is the same God who is intimately acquainted with us.

Of all the places David had been, he'd never been where God was not. And out of that realization, that moment of wonder, David penned this beautiful poem of praise! 

I've been there too. Have you? I've been to moments in time when all was practically perfect in my world. In that moment, the breeze was blowing, the birds were singing, the crickets chirping, the baby sleeping--no angst, no anger, no unsettledness...certainly no fists flailing in the thin air wishing they could land on the face of a God I couldn't quite find...One whom I certainly didn't understand. 

No, in that sacred space, I knew that He was there. 

Right there.

Right in the midst of the miracle moment making everything "well with my soul." 

He was in the breeze, the birds and the crickets. He was in the absolute calm of the baby's sleep, and He reminded me that He always is there...wherever there might be...and that I, like that tiny babe can rest assured that He is with me.

But there's another place in the Bible where another man wrote this: 

"If I go east, He is not there, and if I go west, I cannot perceive Him.

When He is at work to the north, I cannot see Him; when He turns south, I cannot find Him."

(Job 23:8-9 HCSB)

You knew it had to be Job. Our ancient sufferer who lived wrecked at the hand of God as a result of the devil's challenge.

I've been where Job was too. I've strained my eyes to see evidence of God's goodness and have braced myself for the tidal wave of disappointment and discouragement that threatened to destroy what thread of faith I had left.

But do you know what is good about Job's words? I stopped just short of the entire message. Just after her complained that he couldn't see evidence of God, north, south, east or west, this is what he proclaimed,

Yet He knows the way I have taken; when He has tested me, I will emerge as pure gold. 

Job 23:10

Here's the answer to this blog's question: Is God Everywhere All the Time?

Yes. He. Is.

That doesn't mean that it's all good. But it does mean that He can work it together for good.

That doesn't mean that He orchestrated it. But it does mean that He allowed it.

Either by His wisdom in knowing that what seems bad is really good. Or, by His wisdom in knowing when to intervene and when not to intervene in order to keep Him operating inside of His perfection. Either way, God is in it.

And if God is in it, He can bring you through it.

And when God brings you through it, you will emerge as pure gold.