Daily Manna · Day 254 · September 11
Never Far Away
“That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:”
Today's verse is about how near God is, and that is a fact that holds whatever you happen to feel.
Paul says this on Mars' hill, to a city that had built an altar to a god it could not name. The phrase "feel after him" describes groping, the way a man crosses a dark room with his hands stretched out in front of him. Paul lets the Athenians grope, and he tells them what is true while they do it: "though he be not far from every one of us." He does not claim they had already found God. He tells them that distance was never the thing standing in the way.
Lord, I have been groping in the dark and calling it failure. I have gone looking for the door You must have left by, and there is no such door. You are near me at the kitchen sink, and in the car, and in the room where I cannot feel anything at all. I have been asking You to come closer, and that turns out to be the wrong request. So I ask You instead to show me the truth about where I am already standing, which is near You.
This week the feeling may not come. When it does not, you will have to choose what to believe: how the room feels, or what God's Word says.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 254 is Past Finding Out (Romans 11:33).