How many stories on TV have you watched that had a person, lost and lonely, no where to stay for the night; ending up at a all night café or coffee shop? This coffee shop with the lights on becomes an island of safety for a few hours. There is a certain pointlessness to opening the door. It is so lonely.
What \what a good image to consider our God. There are no hours of business or consultation with God. When life is just empty and without direction, or when life is buffeted by storms we can go to God, no matter what the time of day or day of the week. God keeps no hours!
We have too much religion but we live in a time of spiritual malnutrition. Too often people will only run to God when the situation of their lives becomes impossible. This is the god of the gaps! God serves as as the last clause on the insurance policy.
We want to teach people that God permeates all parts of our lives. Whether or not we pay attention ,God is alive and working in our day-to-day activities. God is never absent from our lives. It is ourselves who are absent from God.
This explains why the cross has such a strong hold on our Christian faith. This is God who lives and suffers with us. God is not distant but the sufferings of the cross identify with our own sufferings. God is actually one of us in the tears and the pain of living. We can identify with the suffering God. In all our difficulties, we are assured that God walks with us.
That is why the lonely diner with the lights on in the middle of the night remind us that we can go to God. There are no restrictions or standards of acceptance.
The person who is struggling with drug addiction can cry out to God for help to seek help and sobriety in their addiction. There are no office hours with God to cry out for help.
The elderly grandmother who cries every night because her children are divided from one another. One son and her only daughter refuse to talk to each other over a dispute over their father’s car when he died seven years ago. Every night she can lay out her pain, her anger and her dis appointment before God. There is no appointment list where to share her pain with God and request a healing to her family.
Your forty-seven year old brother struggles with stage four cancer. He can come to God in those dark moments of discouragement and ask for the strength just to get through another day.
God is never distant. We can drop into God’s herart at any hour of the day, especially in the lonely hours of the night. Always check, the lights are always on!
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