Seek the Lord while He may be found. As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying if you even you had only recognized on this day, the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children with you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon the other because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God. (Luke 19:41–44)

We are told in many places in the scripture that God is always with us, that his presence is always there, no matter where we are, or what our circumstances are. Yet a very famous verse, says, seek the Lord while he may be found. It might lead us to ask, what’s going on here? Is God really hiding his face from us?

This passage in the gospel of Luke tells us something that is very important and sheds light on what we might think is a contradiction. It takes us back to the short time before Christ's crucifixion, when he approaches the city of Jerusalem. He looks upon the city as a symbol of all of the people that he loves. If they had only recognized the time when he was close, when he was beside them, and responded to that.

But now it is too late. The people have hidden their eyes from him. They have missed their opportunity. Jesus was close by, in this case in the flesh, and they missed it.

These words provide us with the theme for our Grace for All podcasts over the next month. There are times in our lives when Jesus is particularly near. He is far away when we turn our eyes away from him, when we get distracted by our selfish concerns, by the things that happen, by those things that seize our minds and attention, or just by every day busyness of life.

Here we are reminded to recognize that God is with us, and that he is close to us. We must open our eyes and see him.

Our prayer today:

Dear Lord, help us always to be sensitive to your presence no matter where we are in life, no matter what has happened to us, no matter what the distractions are. We seek your presence, and we seek your closeness every day. Amen.

This devotion was written and read by Jim Stovall.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.