The Universal Presence

“God is not far from any one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17: 27-28)

This verse is spoken by St. Paul in his speech to the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers at the meeting of the Areopagus and was meant to illustrate the tangibility of the Christian God, whom Paul associated with the “unknown god” that these Greeks reserved a place for in their worship.  Tangibility.  Not a word that is typically associated with “unknown”.  But Paul does, because his God is.

The god Paul is witnessing to is close.  Very close, in fact.  How close, you might ask?  Paul, in his effort to witness to the closeness of his god, points to life itself.  And what does life, in part, depend on?  Air.  Oxygen.  You know, the stuff that travels through your mouth, down your trachea, into your lungs, through your bloodstream, bringing strength and life to the billions of cells in your body.  And then it is exhaled.  Your body gently pushes it out of your lungs, through your vocal cords, which vibrate at varying frequencies producing sound.  The movement of your mouth and tongue control the release of this oxygen, these sounds, and hence the source of your voice.  But it is this stuff, air, oxygen, which only imperfectly illustrates the nearness of Paul’s god.  Because Paul’s god is closer than the air in your lungs, your vascular system, and your trachea. 

How can this be?  How can any-thing, let alone any person, let alone any god, be closer to your Self than air?  But even the “air” metaphor (not that Paul is speaking metaphorically), stretched and pushed to its limit, fails to do justice to the intimacy of Paul’s god. 

How about being?  Paul says that we have our being in his god.  The Greek word for being is ousia, which can also mean “existence”.  Paul tells us that he exists IN his god, explaining his previous statement, showing how it is that his god “is not far from any one of us”.  Really, this truth Paul is witnessing to has its source back before time, before the Beginning itself.  This is what Tozer calls “the universal presence”.

Unfortunately we (21^st century American Christians) tend to err in the same direction as the ancient Greek philosophers that Paul spoke to thousands of years ago.  Sure, we don’t refer to our God as unknown, and we don’t (explicitly) worship the gods of the Greek pantheon.  But practically?  Minute-to-minute?  From Monday to Saturday?  Once our Sunday singing ends?  God all too often is relegated to the corner, the little labeled box with his name on it, to the back of our minds waiting to be acknowledged again next Sunday.  Far too often our God, the God of St. Paul, is practically unknown.  Unfortunately I know this more from honest self-examination than observation of other people, though finding a self-proclaimed Christian who fails to consistently live out their beliefs isn’t the most daunting task imaginable. 

We know His name, Jesus Christ, “through [whom] all things were made” (John 1:3).  He is not unknown.  He has made himself known.  And not just himself, but in him we see the Father, “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Hebrews 1:3).  And he lives in us.  Sit with that.  Sit with that when you wake up in the morning.  Sit with that as you drive to work.  Sit with that in the midst of conversations.  Sit with it, so that your Sunday singing spills into Monday, and then Tuesday, into your living, moving, and breathing.
Love going to hbmobilemassage.com