Still True Here

Key Scripture: "...Since you are his child, God has made you also an heir." - Galatians 4:7 NIV

You know what it feels like when everyone has gone home. An hour ago the table was full and the conversation was easy and something in you felt calm in a way you hadn't expected. Now you're standing in the same room with the same chairs, picking up the same cups. The house is quieter. Nothing is wrong. But the warmth in the room has shifted, and you notice it the way you notice a temperature change, not alarming, just different. You start cleaning up and something in you is quieter than it was before they arrived. You just aren't sure yet whether what changed in you will still be true tomorrow.

The next morning comes, and the prayer that felt real the night before sounds different in the car on the way to work. As the routine of the morning takes over, the closeness you felt starts to fade. And the question that forms quietly underneath the routine is whether what you felt was real or whether it only belonged to the evening and didn't come with you into the morning. Paul said something to people who were starting to doubt what had already been given to them, "...You are no longer a slave, but God's child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir" (Galatians 4:7). He didn't write that for a sacred moment. He wrote it for an ordinary morning.

You've probably had a morning where God felt far away and the only thing in front of you was the commute, the errand list, the same routine that waited before anything changed. A prophet named Zechariah spoke to people who were rebuilding after everything around them had been lost, and it sounds like it was written for a morning exactly like that one, "...Who dares despise the day of small things?" (Zechariah 4:10). And somehow God was already paying attention to the small thing no one else noticed. The ordinary morning in front of you might not be as empty as it feels.

Maybe that's why Paul told ordinary workers something you don't forget once you hear it, "...Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord" (Colossians 3:23). Whatever you do, the dishes from last night, the drive to school, the conversation nobody else will hear. And maybe those ordinary moments still matter because of a promise that has outlasted every ordinary morning, "...Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you" (Hebrews 13:5). What you experienced that evening came with you into the kitchen, into the quiet, into the ordinary afternoon where nothing dramatic is happening and everything that matters is still true here. You are known.

Prayer

Father, we have been waiting for another moment to feel close to You again. Teach us to recognize You in the ordinary. You never left. Amen.