God Is Near

If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me.

Psalm 139:9-10

CHARLES FACED AN unhappy situation. Because of some shenanigans in the courts, someone charged him with a crime he hadn’t committed, and he ended up in prison. He felt his testimony as a Christian was compromised and he could never speak for Christ again. But while there, he decided to spend time in prayer and found God speaking to his heart to start a Bible study with like-minded inmates. In time, several men met when they had the chance. Charles realized that even in prison, God was there.

In this psalm, David speaks about God’s nearness. He uses images of heaven, hell, darkness, and the deepest places of the ocean. In every remote place, he realizes God is there because God is everywhere—he is omnipresent.

Theologically, God’s omnipresence means that he is in every place in every time in his full person. He doesn’t divide himself and send a millionth of himself one place and another millionth somewhere else. No, he is completely with you and him and her, all the time and all at once, regardless of whether it’s morning in Pakistan or you’re in the farthest ocean by Antarctica.

This means not only that you can’t escape God but also that God will never escape you, either. His promise is that he’s here with you, right now and always, with his whole being, not just part of himself. So no matter what you have on your mind, he’s with you to listen or to act or to meet a need.