Where'd Dada Go?

I love my daughter more than anything in the world!  But, as most 2 year olds will do, she asks LOTS of questions!  She asks all sorts of questions from what that sound is, to what that picture is, to why she can’t sit in her dresser drawer.  She asks questions all the time and anywhere.  One question that she asks periodically is “Where’d Dada go?” and since my husband works some crazy hours sometimes, it is not unexpected.  The strange thing is that she will ask this question even when he is sitting right there next to her.  The other day the three of us were going for a walk about she said, “Mommy, where’d Dada go?”  “Missy, Daddy is right here.”

It suddenly occurred to me that I can ask the same question of God, “where’d Dada go?”  There are times when we can feel like God is far away from us.  When it feels like God has left us to our own devices.  When we feel like we are living the Bette Midler song about how God is watching from a distance.  The truth is what God is still there, right next to us.  As Psalm 139 reminds us, there is no where we can go that God is not with us:

7Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

13 For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.

Psalm 139:7-14, NIV, www.BibleGateway.com

Often, it is not that God has gone away from us, but we have turned away from our Heavenly Father.  We have turned to something of this world, and lost sight of God.  We have let other things in our lives take priority over our relationship with God and so we feel distant, even though God has not moved at all.  When we feel like God is distant, and we want to ask “where’d God go” we need to remember to just simply turn to him because he truly is right there.

God bless, Liz Arakelian, www.LivingHopeEC.org