Amanda McMillen, “A Present Presence”
If you are someone who suffers from anxiety, or maybe I should say if you are human, then you likely struggle with living "in the moment". Every once in a while I am struck by the reality that my mind can be in a completely different location than my body at any given time. At any moment, I may be either dwelling on regrets of my past, things I did or said that I wish I hadn't done or said, or worrying about the to-do list of my future - what I'm cooking for dinner, how a certain conversation might go, where my life is headed, etc. That we can be thoughtful about the past and plan for the future seems to be both a gift and a curse of being human. But while we are considering these past and future versions of ourselves, we are breathing air in this room. Sometimes being reminded of the present moment can be so grounding, which is why meditation often involves some sort of focus on the breath, the most acutely time specific bodily process that brings us back to the moment we are actually experiencing. But of course, we usually breathe without realizing it and so it's very easy to forget that we're breathing, and our brains once again wander back to our regrets and forward to our to-dos.
In the passage we just heard from 2 Samuel, King David is bringing the ark of God to Jerusalem after being crowned king. At this point in his life, David has overcome a lot to become king of Israel. He has defeated Goliath and successfully warded off the Philistines. After King Saul died, he kept the kingdom united together under his rule. And now, David is marching to Jerusalem to take his place as the anointed king of the Israelites. And he does so with the ark of God, the sacred gold box in which the tablets of the 10 commandments are held, and which indicates God's presence. This is the place where God dwells with the Israelites. David has a past and a future, all of which involves both grand successes and humiliating failures, but God remains with him in each present moment.
Now, the future for ancient Israel is not a particularly bright one at this point in the story. Eventually, the kingdom divides into Northern and Southern halves, until finally both fall to the Assyrians and Babylonians. The ancient Israelites, much like ourselves, were a people full of regrets about the past and worries about the future. They consistently disobeyed God's covenant of devotion, and they were regularly concerned about their ability to hold onto a homeland. But in the midst of those very real concerns, God remained present.
When the ancient Israelites were finally exiled by the Babylonians and their kingdom had officially collapsed, the prophet Ezekiel had a vision of a cart carrying the glory of the Lord out of Jerusalem into exile with his people. David joyfully brought the ark of God into Jerusalem to establish the kingdom as we just read in 2 Samuel, and then God willingly left his throne to join the Israelites in their darkest hour of exile later in Ezekiel. I mean, if that's not the Gospel I don't know what is! Even when their deepest fear for the future became a reality, God was present. God did not leave them to fend for themselves, but instead walked with his people through their living nightmare of exile.
At the end of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins returns to his home in the Shire after adventures that he had stumbled into more or less accidentally. After exciting and dangerous plot twists and turns, Bilbo returns home and the prophecies of old, which seemed impossible to come true at the start of the book, were fulfilled after all - finally, the rivers ran with gold from the prosperity of the land. At this revelation, at the very end of the story, Bilbo is shocked. "'Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true, after a fashion!' said Bilbo. 'Of course!' said Gandalf. 'And why should they not prove true?...You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!' 'Thank goodness!' said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar."
Bilbo was only "quite a little fellow in a wide world after all" and the things that happened during his adventures, the good and the terrifying, were not done in a vacuum, by pure chance. There was an active presence in Bilbo's adventures that brought him to where he needed to go, and so it is with us. Where your presence may be distracted by the past and the future, God's presence is an actively present one. When you and I dwell on our past regrets and future obligations, God is with us in that moment, in those anxieties and fears of what could have been and what will be. God holds all of time, our pasts and our futures, and yet still is an "in the moment" God, working things together for our good in real time. Even if our deepest fears become a reality, as they did for the ancient Israelites in exile, we belong to a God who walks through reality with us. Like King David and Bilbo Baggins, our lives are full of adventures that bring worries and regrets - but we are not alone in this wide world after all.
As the presence of God followed the ancient Israelites into exile, so did Jesus leave the right hand of the Father to be near to us. As the presence of God was embodied in the ark of the covenant for ancient Israel, so was it later made manifest in the incarnate body of Jesus. The man who would stop whatever he was doing, no matter how important, to be present with the people around him. The man who spoke the hard truth, telling his disciples that being anxious does not add a single hour to their life. Jesus knows that we are preoccupied with our regrets and fears, and because we are held by God, our thoughts are held too: all of our regrets from the past and all of our worries about the future were voluntarily laid upon Jesus' shoulders at the moment of his death. All of the thoughts that each of us are thinking right now that are distracting us from the present moment are thoughts that interest God, who cares for what concerns us.
In whatever may distract you today, be it anxious worry or nagging regret, if it feels like you are exiled into the deep recesses of your thoughts - God has taken up his cart and followed you into that exile, so that you will never actually be alone there.
We are just " little fellows in a wide world" after all, and there is a God who is actively present right here, right now - and to that we can say with Bilbo "thank Goodness".
Amen
