Where Is God?
I don’t know where you imagine God is when you pray or think of God, but for much of my life when I thought of God, I assumed that God was distant, far way, removed. It was more than just a geographical sense or assumption, but a relational one as well – distant from me, far from me, removed from me, etc.
I could speculate about where this assumption about God might have originated, but that’s not how I want to spend your time. What I want you to know is that over time I learned that I was wrong about where God is.
I had spent so much time unconsciously believing a lie – a lie that ironically created distance between God and me.
God isn’t distant from me or you. God isn’t removed or far from us and the joys, sorrows, struggles, and uncertainties of life. God is right here.
To understand what the Bible says about where God is in relation to you and me, we need to understand how the Bible uses the word “heaven.”
“Heaven” is first used as a term for the atmosphere and sky. One of the many places we see this is in Genesis 1 where God created the “heavens and the earth.” Heaven in this sense includes the air all around you, the stars in the sky, and everything in between. Check out Psalm 19 for one of the many places this is beautifully expressed.
The second use of the term “heaven” is used to refer to the realm or dimension where God lives and all things are as they were created to be. It might sound like this “heaven” could be far away, impossibly far sometimes, but it isn’t. This “heaven,” just like the other heaven that is the air all around us, is right here too – maybe even closer. It is close enough that our thoughts and our dreams are heard by God in heaven. It is like there is a thin something separating this Kingdom of Heaven from the world that we know, but it is all around us. We can see this most clearly at the baptism of Jesus found in Matthew chapter 3 where “heaven opened” and the Spirit of God came on Jesus like a dove and a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
The beautiful and exciting thing about both of these concepts of “heaven” is that they both mean that wherever you are and whatever is going on in your life, God is “right there.” God is closer to you than you can imagine.
When a woman named Hagar was at the end of her rope, God heard hear cry and the cry of her son and she heard a voice “from heaven” – from the air, from the other realm – giving her hope and a way forward.
When a man named Jacob was alone in the wilderness and running for his life, God spoke to him in a dream where he saw a portal between this world and the world of heaven open up and the voice of God promise to be with him and watch over him.
When Jesus, also called Emmanuel or “God with us” was about leave his disciples for heaven for the last time, he assured and encouraged them by saying, “And remember, [even though you won’t see me] I am with you always.”
God has been trying to tell you and me for a very long time that God is not distant, or far away, or removed, but right here with us in every moment of our lives.
May this reality grow to shape our lives.
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