"Then Haggai, the Lord's messenger, gave this message of the Lord to the people: 'I am with you,' declares the Lord." - Haggai 1:13
Presence. Never underestimate the value and power of presence.
I received the following email late one night -- "Hey PC! By chance do you have a break in your schedule this week to come visit [my wife] and our new born baby girl, who are both, at this moment in Critical care units @ [this hospital]? No emergency. Your smile and presence, would be a world of reassurance for us all!"
I hadn't seen this couple in years. Yet they would like someone's "smile and presence".
I'm not being falsely modest when I say I'm nobody special. That couple just wants someone who will represent the truth of today's verse from Haggai where the Lord said to the people: "I am with you".
God promised it through Haggai. In other words, God promised to be present, but he made the promise to be present through a person who was present, namely, the prophet Haggai.
That's the way God chooses to work with his word, that is, through means, like the water in Holy Baptism, the bread and wine in Holy Communion, and through ordinary people in hospitals, homes, ball fields, and workplaces. God chooses to tell people that He Himself is present through people who are present.
I have friends in Birmingham who drove to Atlanta to be present with a loved one who had surgery. They were present, but they also represented the truth that God is present because that's how God chooses to work. In the same fashion of the email I received that time, my friends who drove to Atlanta were the "smile and presence [that will] be a world of reassurance for us all!"
I myself will always be grateful for the man (not a pastor mind you) from our church who came and visited with me before my back surgery in November 2009. He was my "smile and presence [that was a] world of reassurance!"
To be sure, Jesus, being the Son of God, is the ultimate means through which God gives us his presence. Jesus' last words in the Gospel of Matthew are "behold, I am with you, even to the end of the age."
Yes, Jesus is the ultimate presence of God, but make no mistake about it, because Jesus lives in you by the power of the Holy Spirit, somebody this week and next week and every week needs you to be the "smile and presence [that will] be a world of reassurance for us all!"
Presence. Never underestimate the value and power of presence.
Go visit and encourage someone soon.
"Then Haggai, the Lord's messenger, gave this message of the Lord to the people: 'I am with you,' declares the Lord." - Haggai 1:13
Praise God!
Pastor Chris
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson
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