God's Presence

Read Isaiah 58:6-12

No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.
-1 John 4:12 (NRSV)

A year after Hurricane Katrina, I went to New Orleans with other students in my campus ministry group. We spent a week hanging drywall, spackling, and sanding in Alice's home. Alice was an older woman who had lost three siblings in the year after the hurricane. As she served us peach tea and showed us her paintings of Jesus and Mary, she told us about her life.

By the end of the week, Alice's warmth, gratitude, and faith had inspired and strengthened our faith. Before we could thank her for sharing her life with us, she put her arms around us and told us, with tears in her eyes, "Y'all have been God's presence in my life. You don't know how much you've blessed me. God has been good to me by sending you."

That night during our evening devotions, we reflected on the reciprocal nature of God's rich blessings. Alice had taught us about faith, hope, and love as much as we had helped her as she rebuilt her house and grieved her losses. God truly does become present through the people in our lives; God lives, heals, and loves through our interactions with one another.

Alison VanBuskirk (New York, USA)