If you asked my daughters what the most frustrating thing about God is, I think I know how they would answer. They have long complained that God is invisible. Thankfully, they understand that He is both invisible and present, and they comprehend Him through the eyes of faith that “see” Him in other things. But, if they were given their desires, they would like to hang out with the flesh and blood Jesus right now.

They are not alone. Philosophers have charted a whole philosophical movement in our day that has challenged any sense of the “divine” or “supernatural”. Oddly enough, as humans we have conceded more and more to the ideas of the “virtual presence,” but we are more likely than ever to bring up confusions or objections to the ideas of “spiritual presence”. Even the old “spiritual but not religious” line seems a dated heirloom of a bygone era.

The Church has a distinct challenge, a challenge to reveal the True Presence of God in the world to a world that sounds like Isaiah’s prophecy that people will keep on hearing but not understand, seeing but not perceive. (Isaiah 6) As a part of God’s Church, this challenge is ours. We are challenged to both perceive God’s true presence with us as well as to communicate it. 

I heard of an imprisoned man recently who came to a fellow prisoner, a Christian, saying that he wanted to know the presence of God. The Christian challenged the man saying, “I want you to pray every day for an hour for 30 days that God would reveal Himself to you.” The imprisoned man was able to post up in the chapel for an hour a day, and finally on day 27, he ran out into the yard and said “God did it, He grabbed me by the heart.” 

This year, our annual focus at University Lutheran is “True Presence,” and we will be talking about how God is a real presence in our lives and how we are the means of His presence for others. Like the imprisoned man, we will challenge one another to pray for God’s presence to be something that we can feel deep in our souls, because when He reveals Himself to us, we will run out into this world and proclaim the good news that He has grabbed us by the heart.