It’s after the service.
I’ve talked to the Petersen’s in the foyer, miscellany like the progress of practices for the Easter Cantata, if there’s anything I can do to help serve the meal to students from the Bible college coming this weekend to perform, how school is going for their eight children. We’ve laughed and nodded and Shalom’s found my hand and tugged and I’ve said I’ll pray for them this week, and we’ve made our way to the door, hands full of Bibles and memorywork papers and Sunday School crafts, Shalom clutching skirt.
Her and I, we’ve tiptoed through the spongy gravel parking lot, waterlogged with winter trickling away, found us parked there by Mrs. Nancy Martin. Nancy with the grey curls talking of sick grandbabies this past week and we’ll have to get together next week, Nancy whom Shalom calls “my Mrs. Nancy” praying for her under the dark of quilts, Nancy to whom I say yes, next week, sandwiches and an afternoon wander to the Mennonite store for a chimney for the table lantern, sturdy wood clothespins for spring.
It’s after the service and Farmer Husband and I and some of the children sit in the van waiting for the rest of all of the children. It’s when Claude Martin, (not knowingly related to “my Mrs. Nancy Martin,” but yes, we live in community related by old country ties, old Mennonite faith), when Claude approaches our open, waiting window, reaches in a hand to shake Farmer Husband’s.
“Waiting here just to say hello to me? Kind of you!” He chuckles and we grin and Claude stretches across large hand to shake mine too.
Claude, a founding elder, pioneered this congregation nearly twenty five years ago, his father a founding elder in a neighboring congregation decades before that. Claude’s hair is graying and he’s semi-retired from farming there on Spencetown Road, but his ardency for Jesus only flames hotter. How many families attend here Sunday mornings because they first heard the gospel from Claude Martin, saw the good news lived out when he just showed up to lend a helping hand, listen, talk into the night around the table and a pot of coffee, pray with you before he left.
“Well, we leave this week for Ecuador, Beryl and I. Compassion Canada’s touring us to various projects, giving us opportunity to bring down clothes and supplies for kids.” He’s smiling and we ask questions and I tell him he should live blog it and he shakes his head, says he gets the first part, him being alive while he’s there and he certainly hopes that will be the case and remain so, but "live blog", never heard of that before.
I laugh, tell him to just show us the pictures, tell us the stories, when he and Beryl return. He says he can do that, leans in with open hand again.
“God go with you as you go.” I shake his hand long.
And he pauses.
“That’s what we need to always know.” He looks me directly in the eye. “That in all ways and at all times, we are always in the presence of a Living God. When we know we are always before the Lord, that comforts, that convicts of sin, that kindles us.”
The snow’s dripping and I can feel the heat of his God-love.
“If only we had a constant awareness of the Presence of the Lord…”
Down gravel roads home, past quiet dairy farms and long lanes of maple trees, sap buckets ready for warm days coming and sap running down, I think of Claude’s words: "If only we had a constant awareness of the Presence of the Lord...." They echo another great man of the faith, A.W. Tozer:
“Similarly, the presence of God is the central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push into conscious awareness of His presence.
That type of Christianity which happens now to be in vogue knows this Presence only in theory. It fails to stress the Christians privilege of present realization.
According to its teachings we are in the presence of God positionally, and nothing is said about the need to experience the Presence actually.”
To experience the Presence of God actually. Intimately. Literally. Daily. I hunger for a conscious awareness of God close. I’m made for it – not in theory, but in reality. But how?
Does our cue come from a man who peeled potatoes 400 years ago? Norman Herman, a humble cook who burned too with devout passion, cut up spuds much like I do most days around noon, and asserted “we should establish ourselves in a sense of God’s presence by continually conversing with Him.”
If we talk to Someone, they are present to us. We speak to them and are aware of their listening, their response. We experience their Presence actually.
It’s after the service that I come home and peel potatoes and continue the Continual Conversation.
The one where He whispers love in countless ways and I keep murmuring thanks.
:::
"They shall know that I am the LORD their God...
that I might dwell among them"
~Ex. 29:46
:::
Lord, today, You and I, continually conversing, please. Such a conversation begins with thanks.
Related: How to Practice Being Present to the Presence of God
Photos: thanks murmurs, snapshots of grace, from here
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