Article July 7, 2014 Issue

Always in God's presence

Janet Wenrick

One day last year, as I was praying for myself, I had a thought that grabbed my attention. It was something I had heard years earlier from the children in the Sunday School class next to mine. Attendance cards were used at that time, and as the teacher flipped through the cards, she would call each child’s name. The child would answer, “I am in the presence of God,” which brought a whole new, spiritual dimension to the exercise. It was a reminder of where each of us truly resides—in God’s all-encompassing ever-presence.

When the memory of this came back to me many years later, I took a deeper look at its meaning. I reasoned that if God is All and is present everywhere, and I am His constant, exact reflection, then I am not in the presence of anything unlike God—anytime, anywhere—because God is the infinite One, the All, the only.

What a beautiful thing to teach a child, that we can always answer to being in God’s presence, regardless of what knocks at the door of our thought. Whether it is God calling our name, or some phase of mortal mind trying to get our attention, we can answer with assurance, “I am in the presence of God.”