He’s Already There

My friend sat next to me in my living room. I still had the pink and teal couch back then, a confection of polyester and silver thread I’d inherited that was exactly as garish and horrifying as it sounds. I put it on the curb in front of my house last summer because I’d finally bought something new and the rule around here is that if you put a piece of old furniture by the street with a sign that says “free,” someone will take it. And someone did. Within the day. Because I guess an ugly couch is better than no couch. But it was the couch I had seven years ago, and my friend sat close to me on it, knowing the burden of the broken-down adoption plan we were living through at the time. She asked me as plainly as she knew how: “How are you coping?”

My heart was a little frozen at the time, a defense mechanism in the wake of too many phone calls from my attorney and a nighttime rhythm of rocking a baby to sleep and wondering if he’d be gone the next day. “I am a little afraid of who I will be on the other side of this,” I confessed to her. “I know I will survive it, but I don’t know who I will be. Will I still love the Lord if this ends poorly?”

I have often thought back to that day on the couch because I wish I could tell myself what I’ve learned since then: You may not know who you will be on the other side of this, but you know who God will be. He’s already there. And He hasn’t changed.

I have always loved Psalm 139 for its promise of God’s presence. There is no place on earth (or in space for that matter) that will afford us the absence of His presence. He is everywhere—as far east and west, as high or as low as we can physically go—He is there.

“Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” (Psalm 139: 7-10)

I keep those promises in mind when I’m in an airplane at 35,000 feet or fighting loneliness in an obscure hotel room on a work trip. Perhaps I’m far from the people I love and the places I’m most comfortable, but the Lord is ever with me. There is a spatial aspect to God’s presence that comforts me when my geographical location is far from what feels safe to me. I often quote Jacob: “the Lord has been with me everywhere I have gone.”[1]

But God’s presence is more than companionship on journeys. His presence is a promise of sufficiency today and ten years from now—twenty, thirty, fifty. Decades down the road, His presence will be enough for who I am and what I have lived through then. After whatever sorrows and sufferings I have endured, He will still be there because He is already there. God is eternal, so He is not bound by time the way we are as created beings. He created time, dividing the days and nights for us. We think linearly, but God is self-existent and has always been so. The Bible gives us a promise of the sustaining love of God that transcends time itself. In Romans 8, we’re promised that no trouble or persecution in this life will sever His love for us. Paul says that not even “things present or things to come” can come between us and the love of God in Christ Jesus.[2] The promise we carry as believers in Christ is that our hearts are safe in God’s love no matter what we might endure in this life.

That what-if that circles your mind in the middle of the night—He will be there with you in it, loving you, sustaining you, carrying you. Your future self is safe in His love. Not free from suffering but spiritually safe in His presence and love. Last fall when my health began to disintegrate, I did not recognize my life. I wondered who I would be on the other side of it—if I ever reached the other side. But, unlike the day on the pink couch when my future was dim with doubt, I didn’t question who I would be. In seven years fraught with trials and my face buried in my Bible, I’d learned who God would be, and where, and that was enough for each day. He hasn’t only been with me everywhere I have gone, He is with me everywhere I will go. He will be there, waiting with grace and mercy and presence. He’s already there. He goes before us as He has always gone before His people. “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed” (Deut. 31:8). We can believe in the promise of His future presence and sufficiency because the future is His.

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Recently, I said to a friend who is grappling with a new and incurable diagnosis, “There is nowhere this disease will take you that God is not already there.” I know this to be true. I have learned it to be true. There is no night so full of pain or day of barely keeping food down that He isn’t wholly there with you. There are no surprises for Him ten years into your diagnosis, not twenty or thirty. Maybe there is a cane, then a wheelchair. Maybe there isn’t. But I know that His grace awaits you, and He will build your faith until then to be strong enough to withstand what may come. But today, it’s enough to know that He is present. You may not know who you will be on the other side of this, but you know who He will be. He will be present and faithful as He has always been. You don’t have to worry today about the suffering of tomorrow. He’s already there.

You may not know who you will be on the other side of this, but you know who He will be. He will be present and faithful as He has always been. Share on X

[1] Gen. 35:3
[2] Rom. 8:38
Photo by YUCAR FotoGrafik on Unsplash