You Have My Attention: 6 Days of Creating Space for God to Move in Your LifeSample

Your Presence Is A Promise

Interesting fact about my wife, she is from 2 of the most obscure states in all of the United States. She grew up in Idaho and then moved to Alaska after high school. She was the first person I’d ever met from either of those states. And I was fascinated that she CHOSE to move to Alaska of her own free will. I’m a southern kid. It didn’t make sense to me.

Why? Well, Alaska seems like one of the toughest states to live in. It’s cold and remote and everything is made a little more difficult. It doesn’t have the same conveniences that most cities and suburbs have. But it wasn’t long after we started dating that Meredith convinced me to visit Alaska… and it was incredible.

My favorite part about it was the sky. 

I had never experienced a sky so full… I was a bit shocked. The stars were so bright, and there were so many of them. It felt like I was seeing them for the first time. 

It was obviously the same sky I grew up seeing. The same sky as back home. But I had never ventured deep enough into the dark to see the stars that had always been there. 

Sometimes it takes going deep into a darkness you’ve never experienced before to see a beauty you’d never seen without the shadows of the dark. 

Loneliness and difficult seasons can be like that, they hang over us like the darkness of night, making us feel more alone and afraid than anything else can but when we look up there is beauty to be found in those dark places. Beauty that can’t be seen in the bright beautiful spaces of the daytime but only in those lonely places. 

I love that in the New Testament Jesus calls himself “the light of the world” (John 8:12), when he is with us he illuminates our darkness like nothing else can. And did you know that God promises his presence to us? In Matthew 28:20, he says “and behold I am with you ALWAYS, to the end of the age.” If we put those two thoughts together we can stand on the promise that even in the darkest seasons Jesus is with us and will light up our darkness, we only need to look to him. 

That's why we wrote “Your Presence Is A Promise”, to remind ourselves that even in the darkness, his presence is a promise to me. I don’t need to be afraid. I don’t need to panic. He is there with me and will be my light to show me the most beautiful things this world can offer. 

- Mack