Confirmation
“Oh, for the days when I was in my prime,
when God’s intimate friendship blessed my house,
when the Almighty was still with me
and my children were around me,
when my path was drenched with cream
and the rock poured out for me streams of olive oil.”
Job 29: 4-6
In the last couple of weeks, we met with the first group of confirmation students – a group of 9th and 10th graders preparing to confirm their faith later this fall.
I remember this season of faith so well in my own life – discovering the real presence of God in the world and taking the first steps of figuring out how to shape my life in the image of Christ – a journey on which I’m still working some 20 years later.
As with any relationship, feelings wax and wane. When Job is writing these words, he is reflecting on his life of faith, even in the hardship he faces. When he looks around at his current predicament, it is not his family, wealth or status that he misses most acutely, but the presence of God: once intimate and now feeling so distant.
There have been seasons in my life where I feel like Job – although with losses much less significant than his – times when God felt distant, those advising me were a bit wayward and life was rocky. Sometimes in those seasons, I called to mind those days when God was obviously close, when I heard His voice and felt His presence. And sometimes, that work of remembering has been a discipline rather than a natural response.
As with all our relationships, cultivating closeness with God takes work. While there are seasons when God feels distant and it has nothing to do with us or our circumstances, more often God feels distance because we’ve forgotten what it’s like to pursue Him and His presence.
For me, that pursuit is often through music – through sitting at the piano, or playing hymns and songs of worship on repeat long enough for me to set aside the things that would distract me. I focus on the words of these familiar songs as they remind me of the character of God, His desire to be in my decision-making, and His love for me and His creation. You may find this closeness comes most easily when you read scripture, work out while listening to sermons, or take a long drive with sometime of prayer.
If you’ve never know a closeness with God like this and you want to, ask God to meet with you today – to show you His presence. If you don’t know how to, reach out to one of you Clergy and we’ll help you.
If you have known, I pray that today you would recall the days of closeness with God, and do whatever it takes to find His presence and walk with Him again.
