Bible Readings
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely. (Psalm 139:2-4)
The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)
Thought
Over the past couple of months my next door neighbour has built a home office in his garage. The first thing that happened was that a couple of windows were put into the roof. The garage is adjacent to the back wall of our garden and on warm sunny days my neighbour has these windows open. If I am quietly working in our garden, watering tomatoes or deadheading cosmos plants, I can sometimes hear him talking on the telephone while he is working.
This reminded me of something that I used to do when I was a Headteacher. If it was a nice sunny day and I had a ‘spare’ 15 minutes in my afternoon, I liked to go and walk around the outside of the school buildings. The windows of the classrooms would be open and you were able to hear the sounds of children in their lessons. It was a lovely sound, it gave me a great deal of pleasure to hear the children happily working away. The sound of happy children learning reminded me why I became a teacher in the first place. Often the pupils would be so engrossed in what they were doing that they did not see me pass by outside, but sometimes they did. Of those who saw me, some, especially teenagers, chose to ignore me completely or pretend I wasn’t there, others acknowledged me very quietly (hoping that no one else would notice) while others, usually the youngest pupils, would smile or maybe even wave and point out to their friends that I was there.
God always has an open window onto our lives. He sees what we are doing, he hears what we say and he even knows what our thoughts are. He delights to see us happy. Sometimes, though, we are so engrossed in what we are doing that we do not see him, sometimes we choose to ignore him, whilst sometimes we acknowledge him very quietly hoping that no one else will notice. And then sometimes we know he is there and we want to tell those around us. Let us never be so busy living our lives that we do not see that God is here with us and let us always be ready to share with those around us that God is with us.
Prayer
Father God, we are sorry for the times in our lives when we have been too busy to spend time with you. Thank you that you are always here with us and that you delight to call us your children.
Amen
Song: Good, Good, Father (Chris Tomlin)