It might feel like God is all the way across the cosmos, or that there is a great chasm between where you are standing and where He exists.

Or it might feel like He is somewhere out there, but He is always just out of reach.

But, that is not the case. At least, that is not how God reveals Himself to us in the Scriptures. The Scriptures tell us that He is “not very far from each one of us.”

It doesn’t say that He is not very far from just the Christians. Or just the spiritual gurus. Or the folks who do all the right things. Or the “special” ones. It says {each} one of us. All the humans. You. Me. Whether you feel it or not, He is close enough by. (Acts 17)

The gap we feel –the alienation, the loneliness — is not because of our proximity to Him, but because of our lack of belief.

There was this guy in the Bible named Jacob. He had a lot of issues. So many personal issues and relational struggles and one night, he fell asleep with his head on a rock, out in a desert and he had this dream.

He dreamed that there was a staircase that reached all the way up to heaven and angels were going up and down the staircase. When he woke up, it occurred to him in the most vivid colors, that heaven and earth were connected in a way he had never seen before.

He said, “Surely God has been here all along, and I never even knew it!!” It terrified him, actually, in a good way. So, he named that place, Bethel. It simply means, “The house of God.” (Genesis 28)

Where are you, physically?

Are you sitting on the porch, smoking a cigarette? At the grocery store, in line at the check-out? Nursing your babe on the couch? There is no gap between where you are now and where God is. He is in that ordinary place with you.

Where are you, mentally? Emotionally?

Sinking into depression? Teetering between faith and doubt? Full of angst? Sitting with your questions? Wrestling with your past? Carrying around regrets?

God is in that place, too. There is no hollowed out gorge that you have to cross to get to Him because when Jesus came, He took a cross (laid His life down on it) and bridged the gap between us and our Creator Father.

God’s reality penetrates through everything. Space and time. Matter and energy. He is in this place.

Perhaps you just haven’t known it.

Name your place. And then realize, fully, that God is in it with you. Beth-EL. House of God. There is no secret to getting “in” with God. Just believe in what Christ has done to get you close to the Father.

Right where you are.