Yahweh Shammah, God promised His presence!
When is He present? Is this presence conditional or not?
Have you ever felt as though God has simply left you to figure things out on your own?
Have you ever asked the million-dollar question, “Where is God?”
Maybe you silently cry in agony needing help, or you are asking the question on behalf of those suffering, and the only words you can echo are, Where is God?
There are times when we don’t need answers but want an answer — the one that brings peace or solves the burning desire to know what’s next.
As humans, we are wired in a way that we long for answers. Answers that give us hope. If not hope, we want assurance that tomorrow will be alright.
So what do we do in the present time when the burning question — “Where is God” — has not been answered?
Ezekiel 48:35 is a text that ends in such a peculiar way. The book of Ezekiel ends with these words, “The LORD is there.” Where is “There?”
A little context: Ezekiel lived during the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 586 BC and early years of the Babylonian exile. The book is named after the prophet himself, and he presents the most graphic images of his experiences and that of the Israelites in his time.
“He wrestles with the problems posed by the tragedies of Jerusalem’s destruction and the Babylonian exile: Why did God allow the Temple and Jerusalem to be destroyed?”*
Does not that sound like us today? Why can’t we meet at church anymore? What is this COVID-19, and how long do we have till more people die?
Maybe your situation is not COVID-19, but you are pregnant with lots of questions that lead you to seek answers. Answers only God can give.
When you find yourself with questions and can only sum them up in three words, “Where is God,” remember these two words, “Yahweh Shammah,” which means, “the Lord is there.”
Where is ‘There’?
The Hebrew word for “Is There” is Sham, translated as, “There in, in it, thither, whither, thence, thereout.” You get the point? God is there with you in the situation before the situation presents itself or after.
God is there with us. Let us trust those words and rest assured that He is Jehovah Shammah!
*The Jewish Study Bible, Tanakh Translation. 2004.
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