God is the great reality. His resources are available and endless. His promises are real and glorious, beyond our wildest dreams.
~J. B. Phillips (1906-1982)
As soon as Solomon had finished building the house of the Lord and the king’s house and all that Solomon desired to build, the Lord appeared to Solomon a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon. And the Lord said to him, “I have heard your prayer and your plea, which you have made before me. I have consecrated this house that you have built, by putting my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time.
~ G_d, to King Solomon, in 1 Kings 9
God said, “My presence will go with you. I’ll see the journey to the end.”
~ G_d, to Moses, in Exodus 33
Oh beloved, it is true. Some of us are given a life that could take some others many lifetimes to live. This writer is one of them. You probably do not know me, but i am the richest man to have lived on this sphere.
But, in the last 24 hours, i have only begun to see the unfathomable riches in which He has drenched me. It has happened in the watching of numerous promises come true. Both promises i knew, and those that i did not – until but a moment ago.
Benny is man i love. And he is a man i miss. We lost track of each other some years ago. But it is my great hope to see him in the Kingdom of Heaven. Benny is devout Jew. And i am a devout follower of Messiah Jesus. And we are friends. Friends in the true sense of the word.
We met as engineers working for a very large semiconductor manufacturing company in the 1990s. It was on one of my trips throughout the world, that i had the opportunity to meet this dear man for a few moments that i will never forget.
One of them was at the Western Wall, in the old city of Jerusalem.
Benny took me down there one weeknight, during a low-ebb of the tourist visits. It was a cool, summer evening and really the only other people around were a few dozen Hasidim and other devout followers of Judaism. I felt quite out of place as Benny plucked a paper Yarmulke out of the dispenser and pinned it to my head.
But the feeling of foolishness left me quickly, as Benny (imagine a genuinely nice guy, with the beard and glasses, and fancy skullcap, etc…. yeah, that really fun and funny Jew you know…) popped me on the shoulder, smiled, and pronounced me ready to enter the area near the Western Wall.
We had been chatting about history and politics and Israel’s commitment to protect this ground to the very last nuclear weapon. We talked about the weather and our families as we walked the streets of Old Jerusalem in the cool darkness of that pre-Intifada summer.
And then it happened. Suddenly, I felt this enormous sense that i was in the very center of the world. Everything pivots around this place.
All history.
All politics.
All religion.
All of it.
Then it was deeper. i felt like swooning. It was utterly amazing. There was a sense of pressure in the air. The floodlights were lighting the area well, but even so, it was brighter in this place than it should have been. Then Benny looked at me with his big, goofy grin, and put his powerful hand on my shoulder near my neck.
He said, “Kinda cool! Isn’t it!?!” And i replied, “Yeah, this amazing my friend!”
This fool of writer didn’t know it until tonight (some 17 years later), that he was experiencing the glorious presence of G_d. And He showed me in a verse in 1 Kings 9
Now for this riches part.
Yeah, feeling that amazing feeling was amazing. But then, to have the eternal, unchanging, ever-present One explain something that happened to me 17 years ago, in a verse written nearly three thousand years ago, did something to me.
Can you see it? I did today. It forged within me an astoundingly clear sense of His eternal presence in my very own life. He then – and now – laughing with joy that i would one day discover that He is both then and now, in every one of my experiences.
So, are you thinking that your crazy or amazing experiences are isolated? Maybe they are. But probably, they are not. Dive into the Word beloved. See what He might have to say to you from His eternal and trans-temporal perspective. You might be just as surprised and delighted as the former engineer was today. Tonight is your night beloved. Time to believe in His promises on your life.
