Daily Devotion – December 7, 2021 – Dr. Pat Taylor Ellison

Isaiah 12:2-6
Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Isaiah says that God in our midst is a source of joy!

It’s pretty easy to look for joy from other sources. But we always have God with us. It may be pretty easy, too, to live as though God were far away, watching us “from a distance,” as the Bette Midler song used to declare. I imagine more Americans would agree with that view than the one I (along with Isaiah) am proposing. But of course the Israelites were taught from little on that God was always in their midst. And they practiced their faith as though God were at least very nearby.

During this Advent season, while we wait for the birth of the Christ Child, there is a lot going on, a lot of activity that God is also surely in the midst of. Look for God and you will find evidence that God is very near indeed.

I had a student at the seminary who thought we should look for God the way we look for a perpetrator in a murder mystery – find all the clues, gather the evidence, write it all on a board, send people out to ask questions, and discover what God has been up to in our very midst. Luther says God hides from us sometimes. Perhaps this clue-seeking method would help us find God – perhaps in an unexpected place.

Especially now, in Advent, let’s spend a moment every day looking for God. Let us be, as my student used to say, Detectives of Divinity.

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you giving us clues every day to your activities and presence with us. Help us to find you. And help us to know the joy of discovering you right in our midst! Amen.