Right Beside Me

I know the Lord is always with me.  I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me.  No wonder my heart is glad, and I rejoice.  My body rests in safety.  For you will not leave my soul among the dead or allow your holy one to rot in the grave.  You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever.  

PSALM 16:8–11

Over the years, my wife and I have developed the kind of bond many married couples understand.  We move through the day with each other in mind.  It is not that I think about her every second.  Work often demands my full attention.  But in the ordinary moments, when my mind has room to breathe, she surfaces naturally.  If I am at the grocery store and spot her favorite nutty bars on sale, I grab them without a second thought.  If a new cologne comes into her store, she will save a sample and later ask, “Do you like this?” with that innocent, cute look that makes the moment feel like ours.  In small, consistent ways, we carry an awareness of each other into the choices we make. 

Somewhere along the way, I came to carry that same kind of awareness of God.  It did not arrive at a single dramatic moment.  It settled in gradually, over years of walking with Him, until I realized His presence had simply become normal to me.  It is not a feeling I chase but a nearness I live in.  Most days, I don’t have to work myself into sensing that He is here.  I just know. 

This past week gave me a familiar reminder of it.  I crossed into another decade of life, and I carried a number of prayers into the days ahead.   In one situation after another, God showed up.  What stood out was not that He answered, or even that He answered so clearly.  It was how unsurprised I was.  His presence did not feel like a visitor arriving at the door.  It felt like the continuation of something already there. 

That steadiness is exactly what David is describing in the words above.  Read them slowly and you will notice there is nothing frantic in them.  He is not straining to summon God or waiting for a crisis to prove He’s near; he speaks with a great feel of confidence in God’s presence as something settled and known; always with him, right beside him.  And notice he does not stop at nearness.  Because God is beside him, his heart is glad, his body rests in safety, and he trusts God to show him the way of life.  The presence David is confident in is not merely company for hard days; it opens into joy, security, and direction for the whole of his life. 

That has become normal ground for me, too.  It wasn’t always that way.  There was a time when my sense of God rose and fell with my circumstances.  A breakthrough felt like His favor and silence like His absence.  But that season passed.  Now, when He does great and amazing things, I don’t get too high.  And when nothing happens, or an outcome does not look like the blessing I hoped for, I do not get depressed or start questioning Him.  I have grown grateful and content with who He is and not just what He does.  His nearness is no longer dependent on the anticipated outcome. 

David says something similar later, noting, “I can never escape from your Spirit!  I can never get away from your presence!”  (Psalm 139:7).  If His presence is that constant, then awareness of Him was never meant to be reserved for emergencies.  It is meant to become ordinary in the same way an awareness of someone you love quietly shapes an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday. 

That is the part I no longer want to treat as extraordinary.  Reaching for God only when the ground gives way is a thin way to live.  The fuller life is the one David names at the close of his psalm — walking in the way of life, carrying the joy of God’s presence into all of it: the answered prayer, yes, but also the grocery aisle, the commute, the meeting, the ordinary hours where He has been beside me all along. 

Where have you been treating God’s presence as something to find, rather than something you already live in? 

What might shift if His nearness became the most normal thing about your day? 

My prayer is we are thankful that God’s presence is not something we have to chase.  You are already with us, right beside us, in the loud moments and the quiet ones alike.  Keep us steady when good things come and when they do not, so our confidence rests in You rather than in outcomes.  Lead us in the way of life and let the joy of Your presence be the most ordinary thing about our days.  Amen.