Far above the thin skies, and down below near the dark earth, God is. He is here, in the pain, in the struggle, in the sweat. He smells the sick and the dying. And he is celebrating in heaven with the countless angels over the sinners who are coming to him in repentance every day.
He is with us, as we worry about getting sick, getting others sick, dying and watching others die. And he cares about our suffering.
He is above and outside us, busy running the entire universe.
God is sorrowful with us.
God is, fundamentally, wondrously, happy. He needs not our weakly worded belief in him to make him so. As if he was not the source of life in the universe. As if our explicitly worded or implicitly lived denial of Him caused him one shred of anxiety. No, He is imperviously joyful. He delights to save his own. He controls the stars in their orbits through space with a divine, holy, glorious belly laugh.
He is ever present with all that he is in every place where he is – which is everywhere. He is one hundred percent focused with all his mental faculties on the ant crawling on the sidewalk outside, on the nuclear power – impossible heat generator – of the sun, on you – little you, and me.
This God we refuse, by rebellion or neglect, to think about, pray to, read about, love, rejoice in, worship; this God inflates and deflates our lungs out of pure, wondrous, amazing, and terrifying love.
This God is the one who became a man. He was beaten and whipped until his blood spilled. He slipped on it as he stood and had a thick wooden and splintered cross laid on the ripped flesh of his back. Then, he walked. He walked through a city and up a hill, and on that hill, they hung him up, nailing him to his tree. And there he died, to take the sin from our backs.
And you know what he was thinking about while this was happening? He was thinking about joy. All he could see was the ever-approaching glorious salvation that he was going to accomplish for the ones he loved. Oh, Jesus! He went to the agony of death to win his bride, out of pure, joyous, love. And now he lives and enlivens our hard hearts, risen and conquering, ruling and saving his people.
Is there another God like my Jesus? Did Allah die to save his own? Can the countless gods of Hinduism compare to His singular excellence? Do our earthly idols of money, fame, power, beauty, and self-fulfillment appear as anything more than flecks of dust in the brilliance of His glory? No.
Jesus, the Savior, the Messiah, the Son of Man, the Son of God: Praise him for his wonderous love, life, joy and grace! Lift him on high and worship him! He alone is worthy of praise. He alone is worthy of glory, of all things.
Amen